Grupos de comunicación en España: madurez y profundas transformaciones en un final de ciclo.

Spanish media conglomerates have undergone dramatic transformations in the last 40 years. The main reasons are the unsuccessful attempts at vertical integration in the 1990s, the scarce expertise in the television and audiovisual industry, and the high bank debt. This situation was also aggravated by the severe economic crisis Spain suffered between 2007-2016 and adaptation to the new digital framework. In any case, as is happening in other developed countries, these conglomerates are clearly "maturing," which may result in remarkable changes in the Spanish media landscape. This analysis prospectively points to the impossibility that traditional media conglomerates can continue to maintain the same status quo of the last decades. Through a diachronic prism, it proposes a vision of the future that is probably apparent in two relevant facts: almost all of the old conglomerates anchored in the press will tend to disappear, fragment, or merge into new media platforms and the rest, whose "grassroots trades" are not journalismrelated, will face an intense dispute over contents and compete with new players, such as telephone companies, large internet service providers, and VOD platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]