El servicio externo de la BBC y la Península Ibérica: una lucha por la influencia en años de cambio político (1974-1977)

This article tackles the impact of the end of the Iberian dictatorships, and the processes of political change that followed them, in the BBC Portuguese and Spanish services. It addresses the way the Portuguese revolutionary process of 1974-1975 brought to light some of the contradictions that permeated the work of the British radio. Specifically, the article examines how a worldwide referent in objectivity such as the BBC, which had earned a place as part of the resistance in the popular imagination of countries under dictatorship, ended up establishing rules, mostly left unsaid, of (self-)censorship over its workers output, in line with the network’s alinement with British foreign policy in the context of the Cold War. Also observed is the way the Portuguese situation determined the network’s action towards the transition process taking place in Spain.