* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
The newspaper Dicen was a sports newspaper published in Barcelona whose beginnings date back to September 13, 1952, when it appeared as a weekly magazine.
Its founders were Federico Pastor, Francisco Albiach and José Antonio Caro, who, at the beginning of that year, seeing the dynamics that the sport of soccer was taking, decided to create the company Ediciones Rápidas SA (ERSA) and publish a weekly newspaper specialized in publishing information in which common sense prevailed, far from feelings and that was not influenced by the results.
Its beginnings were not very promising, since the first issues had 20 pages and cost 3 pesetas. The company reconsidered the situation and, starting with issue 6, the magazine was reduced to 12 pages, leaving it at a price of 1.30 pesetas.
It appeared on newsstands on Thursday afternoons and competed with the evening newspapers El Noticiero Universal and La Prensa.
For the direction of the newspaper, the businessmen had a prestigious journalist Julián Mir Vicente, who had started his career in the newspaper La Prensa in the sports section as a cartoonist, to direct the publication, a job he carried out until 1975. Later, he had a second stage between 1977 and 1981.
In the 80s he collaborated in Mundo Deportivo, the first weekly sports publication published in Spain from February 1, 1906 and the second in Europe after the Italian La Gazzetta dello Sport founded in 1896.
Julián Mir, as a reward for his entire career in information, in 1991 received the Forjadores de la Historia Deportiva de Catalunya medal.
The founders of the weekly Dicen had previously founded the simultaneous scoreboard Dardo, but this information system deserves a separate chapter. As an appetizer, I will tell you that you have to go back to a time when transistors or cell phones do not exist and think about how you will be able to know the result of your team if it plays outside, in another town.
The success of the weekly magazine made its editors make the decision to convert the weekly into a daily newspaper on Thursday, February 4, 1965. The header appeared Dicen... (with three ellipses behind the title), with the following subtitle: "First sports newspaper of the afternoon."
The newspaper Dicen was born in times of the dictatorship and came out in the afternoon, since in Barcelona Mundo Deportivo was published in the morning and in Madrid the sports newspaper Marca was published in the mornings, which had its beginnings in San Sebastián and which depended of the National Delegation of Press and Propaganda under the supervision of the FET and the JONS.
That day, La Vanguardia on page 13 published a full-page, two-column announcement of the birth of the new sports evening newspaper.
Its birth aroused the expectation of readers who found in the publication a different approach from its editors accustomed to those carried out by the morning newspaper. It was created with the aim of giving a neutral opinion, which is difficult in times of dictatorship.
From the beginning, Dicen had its editorial and printing press in the premises of Diario de Barcelona, which at that time was printing a circulation of 30,000 copies. The appearance of the newspaper Dicen quickly achieved a circulation of 100,000 copies a day and, although it was published in Barcelona, it reached many towns in the province through (then) regular cars.
El Dicen was the first publication that gave the keys to the Dardo Simultaneous Scoreboard, a system that, through advertising brands, allowed the results of all the games that were being played at the same time to be followed simultaneously from the different soccer fields.
These scoreboards were on the sides of the soccer field goals and were run by people who, via telephone, received the results at the time they were produced and, in turn, updated them on the scoreboard.
Maintenance was simple and was paid for by the advertising companies, who were responsible for a specific match. Said product appeared on the scoreboard and next to it the digits of the result, but that was not only the information, since through cards they communicated any incident that occurred in the match. There was no simpler way for a time when communications were restricted.
In 1975, Dicen… was acquired by the Godó Group, so it was no longer printed on the Diario de Barcelona presses.
Already within the structure of the Godó Group, in 1983, the company Ediciones Rápidas SA (ERSA) carried out a liquidation process, for which its director Antonio Hernández Fillol resigned from his position, and journalist Santiago Gargallo became the new director.
Subsequently, the newspaper was acquired by the company Deportes y Prensa SA and the newspaper Dicen… began to be printed in the workshops of the defunct El Noticiero Universal.
Noticiero Universal began to have financial problems in 1984, which caused a series of strikes that led to its closure in 1985. And with this also came the closure of the sports newspaper Dicen... Later, the header was auctioned and on the occasion of the elections From 2010 to the presidency of FC Barcelona there was an attempt to relaunch it again.
The attempt was a failure and the missing newspaper Dicen… remained in the memory of those readers who were lucky enough to enjoy it for a certain time.
