Exercising Control (Remotly): Attempts and Learnings on Television Identity During the Spanish Transition, Between Consensus and Its Margins

Abstract

This article explores the role of Spanish public television during the transition as a space of conflict, negotiation, and identity projection, as well as its political instrumentalization in the construction of a new democratic reality. Beyond a linear or institutional reading of the period, it proposes a critical approach from the perspective of graphic and audiovisual design, understanding television as a complex system in which discourses, technologies, production policies, and forms of consumption intertwine.

Through the analysis of the notion and evolution of television branding and emblematic cases – such as La bola de cristal, Caja de ritmos and La edad de oro – alongside the key figures who made them possible – Lolo Rico, Carlos Tena and Paloma Chamorro – this work examines normative margins, the tensions between content and container, and the symbolic dimension of the medium as an agent of social and political representation.

The text argues that, in its attempt to define a majority identity, public television tends to exclude minority voices, revealing the paradox between plurality and consensus. It reflects on the need to imagine new visual and institutional structures capable of embracing social heterogeneity without diluting it into mass entertainment formulas dictated by audience ratings.

Ultimately, it proposes a re-reading of television identity from a situated perspective, recognizing that its forms of representation, symbols, and strategies are not neutral but profoundly historical and political. From black and white to DTT, this work traces a critical cartography of the medium as a living archive of ongoing democratic, cultural, and aesthetic tensions.