On April 28, 2025 something happens and changes the circumstances of millions of people. Around 12:33 in the morning, a generalized blackout affected all of Spain, except the “island” of Oseja de Sajambre.
The analog radio – and the digital one, in the areas where the Internet connection was maintained – also worked as a “island”, not only for its emission system or its emergency generators, but because the basis of the medium of sound communication are the human voice and the possibility of creating community with other voices and listeners. “To turn on the radio was the window to freedom. What allowed me to feel a human being,” says Ingrid Betancourt, kidnapped by the FARC for six years in the Colombian jungle.
In episode 2 of the first season of the Audioserie The great blackout“A father and his 14 -year -old daughter have been isolated for several days on the Galician coast and, although they have enough food, begin to run out of drinking water. With an old radio as the only means of contact with the outside …”.
Those so ancestrally human bases, so fragile and heroic at the same time, allow the radio to accompany, connect and transmit essential information when the rest of the communications fail. You can do it thanks to the characteristics of the radio channel, that is, thanks to the temporality and linearity of the radio message that allows us to feel that we witness the chronicle of the story of the present time, even contribute to it; Thanks to its high temporal and spatial penetration (the radio broadcasts 24 hours a day 365 a year, does not shut up, while it arrives and occurs anywhere, circumstance or company); And thanks to its speed and agility as an informative means (instantaneity, immediacy, know how of radio journalism).
Since the arrival of democracy to Spain, the Spanish general radio, although today gives too many wings to opinion, is essentially informative. A medium whose informative services are able to jump through the air the most consolidated programming and the pre -produced contents, to begin an informative special before a last hour that is intuited, it will have consequences (informative criteria, focus, hierarchy, order).
This radio reaction does not always be reaction to the circumstance or “the adventure” is faced with the same guarantees of success (the informative muscle is not equally trained in all writings or the same human resources are available), but it is assumed from the social responsibility that entails journalistic practice.
The blackout reminded us that digitalization does not eliminate vulnerability, but that it moves it to other critical points. And that that world we supposedly carry in our pockets – the mobile – sometimes also collapses and leaves us alone in the face of danger or adventure (remember The hero’s journey?).
At that time, we need to find new allies that connect us with the community and, above all, that they provide us with information, even give us solutions.
Read More: Not only during a blackout: the value of the radio in the crises
90 % of people listened to the radio during the blackout
“I cannot live without the radio” (it sounds like an exaggeration), “the radio can with everything” (more exaggeration), “the radio no longer listens to it” (pure exaggeration, and lie: more than 23 million Spaniards listen to it from Monday to Sunday, with a penetration of 55 %), “the smartphone It is the new transistor. ”
Rodrigo Cortés says that “exaggerate reality allows you to see it” and probably those exaggerations formulated in the form of phrases work as a magnifying glass. They show that human beings need extraordinary circumstances, adventures, almost impossible realities to assess the everyday, what unemployed the fireworks of the last newcomer, “of the freshly released lover”, to return, in short, as in the classic trip of the hero (and of the heroine) with the lesson learned.
Sergio del Molino wrote, a few days after the electric blackout, which “Spain rediscovered conventional radio when everything else failed.” The survey flash carried out by the Center for Sociological Research confirms it: 62.1 % of the respondents listened to the radio during that day to inform themselves of what was happening. Almost 90 % of the people who did it that day, as usual practice or as an isolated event, value the information received by the station they tuned.
Another survey conducted by Appinio for Atresmedia revealed that 71 % of respondents used the radio during the blackout, compared to the usual 40 %.
This event replied behavioral patterns already identified by different investigations during the COVID-19 crisis, the Filomena Nevada or the recent floods of Valencia. In moments of uncertainty, in emergency situations, radio consumption increases, they change listening habits and revalidated confidence in the sound environment.
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The radio has become heroine after the blackout (again a literary exaggeration to put us all in front of the mirror of our fragility). The photos of the transistors, the packages of batteries, the streets again reflecting collective listening and the radio and radio journalists converted into influencers Sudden for many reflect that everything that is solid is always worth returning. The auditory caress.
Beyond the resilience and penetration of the environment, of its technical flexibility, the lesson that the radio has given these days is much more radical for these times: a demonstration of what journalism is for and how to do it when everything else fails.
The ancestral wisdom of oral communication and knowing how to make Spanish radio journalism (the reporter radio) led to this medium to be the most reliable. It has been adding evidence that it is always there, weaving an invisible tooling thread of all kinds. We are notified.
