doi.org/10.15198/seeci.2016.40.122-135
RESEARCH

MODERNIZATION OF THE ECONOMY IN SPAIN THROUGH JOURNALISTIC SPEECH: SOME REFERENCES TO THE ROLE OF LUIS OLARIAGA
LA MODERNIZACIÓN DE LA ECONOMÍA EN ESPAÑA A TRAVÉS DEL DISCURSO PERIODÍSTICO: UNAS REFERENCIAS AL PAPEL DE LUIS OLARIAGA

Begoña Pérez Calle
Carmen Marta Lazo¹
Pilar Arranz Martínez¹

¹ University of Zaragoza. Spain

ABSTRACT
The modernization of the studies of Economy in Spain occurred during a period in which the regenerationistic visions presided over most of the political and economic speeches and, furthermore, they had settled in some university chairs, being able to speak of a modernization linked to the Spanish reality of each moment. On the one hand, there would be an academic entrance of rigorous analysis through new generations that extended their knowledge in other European countries thanks to the Board for Study Extension, and imported the latest developments of some relevant foreign authors. On the other hand, argumentative and opinion texts were a key element, as an informative tool, through which certain relevant economic issues in the era of Spanish Regenerationism would be explained, in an analytical and rigorous way, outside the chairs. In this article, we analyze this phenomenon through the speech of one of the most characteristic authors, Luis Olariaga, a columnist, a predecessor of economic journalism.

KEY WORDS: Olariaga, Economic journalism, Regeneracionismo, Sugar Trust, Junta de Ampliación de Estudios, Generation of ‘98, Articulism

RESUMEN
La modernización de los estudios de Economía en España se produjo a lo largo de un periodo en el cual las visiones regeneracionistas presidían la mayoría de los discursos políticos y económicos y, además, se habían asentado en algunas cátedras, pudiendo hablar de una modernización vinculada a la realidad española de cada momento. Por un lado, se produciría una entrada académica de análisis rigurosos a través de nuevas generaciones que ampliaban sus conocimientos en otros países europeos gracias a la Junta de Ampliación de Estudios, e importaban los últimos desarrollos de autores extranjeros relevantes. Por otro, serían una pieza clave los textos argumentativos y de opinión, como herramienta divulgativa, a través de la cual se explicarían, de una forma analítica y rigurosa, fuera de las cátedras, ciertos asuntos económicos relevantes en la época del Regeneracionismo español. En este artículo, analizamos este fenómeno a través del discurso de uno de los autores más característicos, Luis Olariaga, un articulista, antecesor del periodismo económico.

PALABRAS CLAVE: Olariaga, Periodismo económico, Regeneracionismo, Trust azucarero, Junta de Ampliación de Estudios, Generación del 98, Articulismo

Recibido: 06/04/2016
Aceptado: 19/06/2016
Publicado: 15/07/2016

Correspondence: Begoña Pérez Calle
bperez@unizar.es
Carmen Marta Lazo
cmarta@unizar.es
Pilar Arranz Martínez
parranz@unizar.es

1. INTRODUCTION

At the end of the nineteenth century, the climate of opinion that gave rise to the regenerationistic movement presided over the media of that moment in Spain and it was of vital importance for the configuration of the economic thought and discourse. Rather than a school of thought, we can speak of a whole stage and an environment (Tusell, 1989). Although Regenerationism quickly ran out as a political and intellectual movement, its social repercussion was intense. The regenerationistic literature introduced, as a novelty of clear positivist influence, the handling of empirical data, although many have been revealed a posteriori as erroneous and in some cases crazy. In order to preach regeneration it was essential to use a special rhetoric in which hope for regenerating Spain was to be poured out. However, the transcendence of the regenerationistic movement would be undermined if limited to the creation of a new language. Quite the contrary, regenerationists drew the attention of Spanish politics and public opinion to fundamental problems of the country and its commandments contained great truths about the Spanish problems, being a precise budget for the positive action in different fields of the economic life in Spain. Some outstanding works would be based on the discourse that preached regeneration, as is the case in this analysis, and far from conflicting with the economic theory, they would bring to the public certain problems of the moment under the prism of a rigorous analysis.

1.1 Regenerationism in the media

The discourse of national regeneration was present in journalistic life and, frequently in the media, politics and communication came hand in hand, in well-known cases as that of Gasset in El Imparcial with his political entrances and exits. We can also remember the contributions of Ramiro de Maeztu in the weekly magazine Vida Nueva, who addressed, as one of the most outstanding issues, the role of the press in the loss of the last colonies and the formulas of national regeneration. It also relates the rise of Basque and Catalan nationalism, characterized by rejection of the incompetence of the Spanish leaders.
This way, regenerationistic intellectuals tried to outline a new idea of ??Spain, based on authenticity, so it was necessary to spread their studies in widely disseminated magazines, some of them previous to those of 98, which in some cases are confused with them. As De Haro-de San Mateo (2011: 18) points out, “the star sector of specialization, which offers the broadest and most varied range of topics, levels of dissemination, periodicity, price and presentation of information is doubtless the one of magazines “.
As an example, the pioneering journal was the Revista Contemporánea, founded in 1875 by the regenerationist Jose del Perojo, who had collaborations with people related to the Free Teaching Institution, a pedagogical institute that was created in 1876 with a great projection In various areas of the country’s life. From the Free Teaching Institution, in 1906, the Board for Study Extension was created, dedicated to providing scholarships for work abroad (Cacho, 1962), with the participation of such outstanding figures as Julián Sanz del Río, Rafael María de Labra and Urban González Serrano, who managed to import European aesthetic and philosophical currents, thus breaking the relationship with the Spanish cultural tradition, regardless of political ideology. In this respect, it should be emphasized that, as a movement, regenerationism was transversal in ideology, and therefore among its representatives there were markedly conservative, as well as nationalist progressives and republicans.
Also noteworthy is the publication La España Moderna, founded by José Lázaro Galdiano, who had a strong Europeanist vision and a cosmopolitan spirit. Ramiro de Maeztu, Miguel de Unamuno or Emilia Pardo Bazán, a writer, journalist and feminist, who directed her own magazine, New Critical Theater - financed by herself - published from 1891 to 1893. Pardo Bazán, in addition to presenting her own literary theories, was in favor of Europeanism, expressing also in the articles of the two cited publications (Modern Spain and New Critical Theater) her feminist thinking, defending the rights of women and their education, while at the same time criticizing Spanish middle-class women (Paredes, 1992). In her opinion, the liberation of women could only be achieved through a solid education, as she put forward vehemently at the National Pedagogical Congress held in Madrid in 1892. Without a doubt and from our point of view, Emilia Pardo Bazán was a valuable woman in her time, with an advanced vision of what the country should be that she reflected on the outstanding list of publications of all kinds.
Other magazines that forged the regenerationistic spirit were Germinal, directed by Joaquín Dicenta; the weekly magazine Vida Nueva, in which articles of such important figures of 1998 such as Miguel de Unamuno and Ramiro de Maeztu are published; or Alma Española magazine, a publication of a rebel and liberal spirit, in which first class characters such as Eduardo Dato, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and Joaquín Costa wrote.

2.- OBJECTIVES

This paper directs its efforts to the recognition of the important task that some precursors of the economic journalism realized in such an important moment as the time of the Spanish Regenerationism. In a country in the hands of its politicians and oligarchs, but in which both the modernization of economic studies as a science would penetrate, some authors would collect such analyzes and disclose them outside the chairs or specialized circles. Far from the traditional qualification of regenerationistic writings as lacking in rigor, full of catastrophic diagnoses and simple and crazy solutions, and in fact there were some, the main objective of this paper is to demonstrate how, from the pen of a columnist of the moment, Luis Olariaga, shaped in Germany through the programs of the Board of Study Extension, another model of discourse emerges, combining scientific rigor with regenerationistic sentiment and discourse, and gets its dissemination to the people through the analysis of important economic situations of that Spain, transmitted through the media.

3.- METHODOLOGY

The realization of this piece of research has taken place in a qualitative context, through exploring, describing, classifying, evaluating and understanding. The method used. The materials used in research have been exclusively literary sources, both primary and secondary. As for the method, through the review of these sources, the information collected through documentary descriptive analysis has been exploited.
This paper is organized as follows: after an introduction that situates the context of the regenerationistic discourse and its application to the media and establishes the hypothesis of arrival that, in that discourse, rigorous economic elements, even predecessors of economic journalism, could be found, analyzing a case chosen as representative: that of the writer and economist Luis Olariaga Pujana.
Through the source tool (both primary and secondary) the arguments that Olariaga presented in the media during the studied period, as well as studies on the author and his speech to date, are analyzed. This way it will be possible to establish the certainty of the hypothesis described above, which leads us to the achievement of the main objective of this role, indicated in the previous epigraph, and to the establishment of the respective conclusions.

4.- DISCUSSION

4.1 Luis Olariaga: the new economy in the media

As we have already put forward, during the time presided by the regenerationistic thought, the modernization of the studies of Economy took place in Spain. Luis Olariaga was one of the most relevant figures of this modernization. Unlike other teachers, Olariaga made use of the journalistic tool for his purposes, fitting his modernizing objectives into the regenerationistic environment and bringing his analyzes and opinions to the media.
Luis Olariaga Pujana (Vitoria 1885-Madrid 1976) had been trained in mercantile studies and had begun to work in the Alava banking sector. In 1905, he moved to London to the branch of Credit Lyonnais, establishing a close friendship with Ramiro de Maeztu, who also put him in contact with Ortega and Gasset. After returning to Spain and beginning a law course in 1910, in 1912 Olariaga traveled to Germany with a scholarship from the Board of Study Extension, where he worked with Wagner, Sering and Oppenheimer. At that time, he began to be incited in his work by Ortega, but the war forced him to leave Germany, truncating his studies. In 1915 he graduated in Law from the University of Oviedo and got a PhD a year later in the Central with a paper titled On the agrarian problem, before a court presided over by Adolfo Posada. From that moment on, he began to attend the Seminary of Flowers of Lemus, with whom it seems that he did not have as close a union as the rest of disciples because of, according to Carmen Pérez de Armiñán (1991), the situation of economic independence of Olariaga. In 1917, he obtained the Chair of Social Policy and Comparative Legislation of Labor in the Doctorate of the Faculty of Law of the Central University, competing with Francisco Bernis, with Azcárate presiding over the court, in which also Sánchez de Toca and Flores de Lemus were present.
Along with his work in the chair, Olariaga had a brilliant journalistic career (he wrote more than 700 articles), an area in which he joined Ortega y Gasset, collaborating in the magazine España and later in El Sol, which led him to become a relevant personage of the Spanish society of that moment, participating even in the Government of Primo de Rivera. His journalistic speech is full of titles almost always raised with a hint of criticism. In fact, he came to be processed by insults to the President of the Government in 1920 due to an article published in El Sol. He also held political positions during the Republic and, after the Civil War, during which he had joined the Franco-supporting party and held some positions for the Government of Burgos, he was appointed Counselor of the Bank of Spain in 1940 and resumed teaching at the Faculty of Law that same year to teach Monetary Policy in the courses of banking specialization. He also started teaching at the Faculty of Political and Economic Sciences, but he would leave it there shortly afterwards, reorienting his teaching to employees of the Bank of Spain, a training experience in the expansion of which the Bank Institute was created in 1948 (Velarde, 1991).
In the figure of Olariaga, we can see the presence of the regenerationistic discourse going hand in hand with the process of modernization of the economic studies in Spain in its realistic trend. Pérez de Armiñán (2001, 535) describes him as “a regenerationist in Spanish politics”, which can be verified in practically all his papers and articles. The conjunction between the influence of Flores and Ortega, this last one reciprocal, is evident since it was the economic discourse of Olariaga that influenced in the economic vision of the regenerationistic author. Olariaga would be grateful to Ortega for his alleged intervention in granting the scholarship of the Board of Study Extension to study in Berlin, and Ortega would respond that he worked heroically since the most urgent thing they needed was Economy (Pérez de Armiñán, 1991).
Pérez de Armiñán also points out how Olariaga paid special attention to certain topics, including social policy, monetary and banking problems, railways and the coal industry, in which, in addition to explaining what happened, he tried to offer solutions. Regarding the former of the topics, he indicates that the social factor presides over the public performance of Olariaga, who went so far as to say “I have not been interested in economics but as an explanation of a social drama.” Knowing scientific socialism, since he had analyzed the work of Karl Marx, he considered the socialist ideal as a “moral postulate” that would survive “the failure of all doctrines concretely formulated to realize it” (Pérez de Armiñán, 1991 ). In this line, he would warn about the possible damages that the ideas and feelings cultivated in the proletariat could do if they were not directed to them by channels of founded hope.
Olariaga did not feel connected to the socialist doctrines, although on numerous occasions he defended the workers. On the contrary, he would confess to be a liberal, yes, in terms of his feelings and not of his political ideology, in fact we can affirm that he wrote on numerous occasions referring to his pre-war liberal feelings. Pérez de Armiñán (1991) clarifies that these feelings are the result of reflection on the doctrine and the observation of its effects in European society, being a liberalism chaired by mistrust and little faith in professional politicians and forced to adapt to the social reality, with greater relevance of the new social values, needing for this the collaboration of the State. In this sense, he ends by stating that Olariaga was “a liberal reformist who believes and pursues social progress” (Pérez de Armiñán 1991, p.146). Velarde adds that Olariaga warns about “what is wrong with our economy and, therefore, what must be reformed” (Velarde, 1991, p. XLVI).
In this sense, it is remarkable how he came to be in favor of the right to strike, postulating against military interventions, although he considered strike action to be an unwise policy, unlike profit sharing, which was to him the best way out of the pending problems between capital and labor (Pérez de Armiñán, 1991). To Olariaga, the organization of the Spanish proletariat was relatively important although it was “in a rather rudimentary state. It is the work of enthusiastic and admirable workers” (Olariaga, 1918, 272). Labor unions only lead to negative market imperfection, since the productive classes are organized in front of the rest of society, against consumers who were neither bosses nor workers whose value was in their individual quality and against the State, causing them a clear damage. This idea was expressed by Olariaga: “The two great utilitarian monopolies are taking over the world and ... later they will fight with one another for supremacy”, showing their fear of “their common aberration, their lack of spirituality triumphing” (Olariaga, 1919: 3). The best way to solve the capital-labor tensions is for Olariaga “a good system of general and professional education so that the proletariat joins, as qualified as possible, the work life and immediately participates in the profits and in the direction of the company that employs it”, an idea he expressed in 1919 (Pérez de Armiñán, 1991, 158) .

4.2 The sugar trust and Olariaga’s speech: a relevant analysis

The Spanish sugar problem had attracted the attention of one of the champions of the modernization of economic studies in Spain, Antonio Flores de Lemus, who took the study of the sector to his paper Spanien, commissioned by the professor of the University of Berlin Ernst von Halle in 1906 for his Yearbook on the economies of several countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, it was an essential publication for Flores de Lemus, as well as the first applied Spanish analysis on the operation of a rigorously executed trust.
That year, Flores was a young university professor who researched and created a school in Barcelona, launching from there to the world his vision of what was happening in the economy of his country, although, in Spain at that time, he could not find an acceptable scientific-quality magazine to direct that article. Flores de Lemus’s study, presenting the struggle between the trust and the outsiders, clearly describes the theoretical behavior of a price-driven strategy in this type of monopoly market and is an article that, in our opinion, follows the model of closely empirical work of Schmoller’s scientific path.
The exhibition of Flowers in 1906 can lead us to understand the argument: after the loss of the colonies and the cessation of supply of American sugar, Spanish sugar production developed very quickly, since the high price of sugar allowed great profits, thus creating factories the production of which exceeded the needs, which degenerated into unbridled competition among manufacturers both to get beet and for the sugar market. This situation of unsustainable struggle led to the constitution of a trust in 1903 called General Sugar Society. The management of the trust excessively limited production, which was accompanied by a strong increase in the price of the sugar product, while the remuneration of raw materials (beet and cane) was very low and insufficient. The farmers’ response was clear: to fight against the trust by working directly on the raw material, organizing cooperative factories and thus arriving at a situation of fighting oligopoly. Faced with this, the trust began to behave as a leading entrepreneur by setting fighting prices, that is, by lowering its final prices in order to shed its new competitors out of the market.
Since 1906, due to the enormous supercapitalization of the trust, competition with the outsiders began to be impossible. In 1906, the price would fall by 60 pesetas / ton in comparison with 1905, the outsiders asking to obtain from the State the concession of a monopoly. What the State did was to prohibit, until 1910, facilities of new companies as capacity expansion of those already installed, accompanied by an increase in the tax burden on the final product. Prices rose for some time but the trust continued to lose ground, manufacturing half of what it had manufactured in 1904. The Government, seeing the inefficacy of the law, restored free circulation, lowering prices until 1913, the year in which the trust and the outsiders reached an agreement, raising the prices immediately, the situation in which the market was on June 29, 1914, when Flores de Lemus published in The Times his article “Some statistical data on the current state of the Spanish economy”, adding the continuation of the issue of the sugar trust in the eight years between the two studies (Flores de Lemus, 1914).
In 1915, Olariaga would spread the subject using again the journalistic tool and through his vision and discourse on imperfect competition. Both are based on the role they play in the economic sector under study, given that the underlying philosophy is regenerationism. If imperfect competition attains the achievement of regeneration, it is accepted, whereas on the other hand, if it exerts a conservative effect, it has to be eliminated:
 «What is needed is to review our monopolies, tariffs, economic agreements, consumption ... and see if they are in accordance with the ideal of justice of a modern society. And if they are not, we all the Spanish liberals should rise up as a single man and claim against that scenario of old-aged issues that seize the national production and push the flower of our energy overseas. It is necessary to give a violent push to the conservatives «(Olariaga, 1910, pp. 39-40).
In this sense, we would like to point out how Olariaga would praise the work of municipalities in “educated countries” in 1918, acting as entrepreneurs and influencing as buyers and sellers of goods and services, since, this way, the municipality “favors the working class, entering into a competition with monopolies and private companies that are harmful to them”, he would add to this idea that “In Spain, workers cannot thank the municipalities for anything “(Olariaga, 1918, pp. 276-277).
As we have just commented, Olariaga was responsible for spreading the case of the sugar trust in 1915, taking it to public opinion, in a clearly regenerationistic style and referring to it as “ Spanish-style trust”, using for its description, as indicated, the words of Canals in the magazine Nuestro Tiempo as of September 15, 1907: “an exclusively financial company, with a very headstrong head and with roots in politics, so that one day it could suck sap out of taxpayers through subsidy or monopoly” ( Olariaga, 1992, p. 415). The formation, performance and pricing of the sugar trust, which had been so rigorously described by Lemus Flowers in Spainien, is also described by Olariaga in his article “El Botín Azucarero”.
Although we must emphasize that the presentation is similar and also enjoys great rigor, the regenerationistic style is unmistakable: “It is a shame, simply ... Let us first show the existence of abuse” (Olariaga 1992: 418-419). To describe the grouping of the sugar companies, he will do it under the heading “The booty is organized”, his presentation on the formation of the monopoly being very interesting:
“Soon the factories began to make each other mutually concurrent, and at the same time many of them began to close down... then some profiteers came to mind a great idea: since there is a base of homeless consumers whose property can be squeezed with impunity, we are going to unite all the factories, to save the capital invested in them, to close the worst situated ones and the worst off ... and finally, we end the competition in the sale of sugar and charge the Spaniards for them whatever comes to us “( Olariaga, 1992, pp. 423-424).
The establishment of the outsiders and the generated struggle describes it as a situation whereby “at the price of good prices, new free factories were established. The trust was prepared to fight: it was necessary to destroy that concurrence that was being born “and the established protection would qualify it this way:” The General Sugar Society had to turn to our generous politicians “(Olariaga 1992: 427-429).
In Olariaga the expressions are contrary to interventionism, a policy that he rejects if it is not justified by the general good. He will only accept it in situations where private initiative is lacking, and this he would always proclaim, even in times of corporatism:
“The interference of the State in the management of business must be discussed in the field of practice and not of principles. Where the state cannot advantageously replace the private entrepreneur, the most discreet thing to do is to leave the industries alone “(Olariaga, 1925).
In a very regenerationistic article, Olariaga made a strong criticism of the capitalism of the Restoration, and he came to call Maura “Messiah”, who after being “abandoned” by the Conservative Party “returned to walk his soul figure in pain for the solitary twists and turns, after leaving us Spaniards with the same calamities and some more than those that we suffered before” (Olariaga, 1992, p.408) and, in the same article, he referred to the industrial protection as “perhaps beneficial in countries of much science, good administration and relatively healthy politics”, pointing out that “in Spain, it is fatally doomed to create parasitic and absurd business and to nourish the lusts that roam the old politics “(Olariaga 1992: 413).
Later, during the Second Republic, he would confirm how the State “should leave that minimum freedom of operation of the companies, without which they cannot face the consequences of their businesses”, adding that state interventions “have to fulfill two unavoidable practical conditions: be suitable and not substantially hurt the companies which particular life they try to harmonize with the general principle of the nation (Olariaga, 1992: 498), and criticizing the interventionism of the dictatorship in terms of mixed juries:
“This interventionist action of politics in business is simply destructive, incompetent and partial. It corresponds to a system of fascist constitution, of state despotism, and it was introduced in Spain in times of dictatorship due to the pedantry of some right-wing workers who did not realize what these things could mean in practice, because they believed that the conservative policy was going to endure forever and did not imagine that any day the state could fall into revolutionary hands “(Olariaga 1992: 499).
This liberal foundation of Olariaga leads him to reject the grouping of companies:
“Another cause or the disturbing factors of the normal functioning of the liberal economy has been the industrial unions, the consortia of producers (...) trying at all costs to defend the prices without lowering them, although they had to be restricting the production. In order to keep prices, production has been shredded. Here is one of the factors that influences this elastic mechanism of the liberal economy, which gives it a rigidity in a very important sector of its formation and which prevents the necessary articulation, the necessary adjustment of supply and demand” (Olariaga, 1992, pp. 467-468).
Important analyzes, in other sectors and always with a regenerationistic trend, with an abusive anti-monopoly profile of Olariaga were also taken to the media, such as those dedicated to the railroad and the coal industry, in papers such as The question of tariffs and the problem of Spanish railways (1921), Railway Business and the Poverty of Spain (1915) or The coal crisis in Spain (1925). The arguments presented are similar to those that Olariaga manifests in the case of sugar, and they expand the sample of academic regenerationistic discourse in the media.

5.- CONCLUSIONS

The union of elements so relevant at the dawn of the twentieth century, such as the modernization of the studies of Economy in Spain and the regenerationistic thought had an important support in the journalism of that moment. They were times of academies, universities and magazines of scientific dissemination reserved to reduced sectors of the population, and in which the press was the window to the dissemination of the new thing. A clear example of this is the parallelism between two ways of explaining a situation as relevant in economic history as the sugar trust, after the loss of the colonies: one, by Antonio Flores de Lemus, rigorously scientific and based on the language of the economic theory; another, the one of Luis Olariaga, not less rigorous in the description of the facts, but based on the regenerationistic discourse and with a disseminating objective.
The comparison of the description, the arguments and the functioning of the trust shows that the underlying information is the same, and that the journalistic version achieved a dissemination of reality faithful to the previous economic analysis. From here we can consolidate two ideas: on the one hand, those regenerationistic, self-critical, pessimistic and encouraging visions sought to analyze the Spanish reality of that time, to spread it to public opinion and to bring it closer to the citizenry; and on the other hand, that through the media, the modernization of the Economy as a science in Spain was not only limited to academic environments.
In the regenerationistic period, the journals played an important role in spreading the ideas of renewal, through deep analyzes elaborated by important signatures, which by way of articles came to present their criteria and arguments. Olariaga was one of the most outstanding figures and a predecessor of the later economic journalism, which was created, decades later, since 1971 in the Faculties of Information Sciences, the Complutense University, Autonomous Barcelona and Navarre. In this sense, we can say that the writers were pioneers of that essence of economic journalism, which used opinion as a tool for the proclamation of their ideas. It would take more than half a century until economic journalism took the shape of information, already with other genres of more denotative and argumentative character, fruit of the academic university training, which had the Schools of Debate (1926) the Official School of Journalism of Madrid (1941), the School of Barcelona (1952), the Journalism Institute of the General Survey of Navarre (1958), the School of Journalism of the Episcopal Conference of the Church in Barcelona and Valencia (1960), the School of Journalism of the University of La Laguna (1964) as predecessors of the university studies, but it was not until the beginning of the decade of the seventies when the profession acquired a university dimension. Also in 1971, the Faculty of Science of Information Sciences of the University of Navarre (Vadillo Bengoa, Marta-Lazo and Cabrera Altieri, 2010) was officially recognized.
As a discussion, we could consider whether this generation can be considered to be journalists. To answer this, we would have to go back to a long debate. At times, by the fact of writing in media, those who carried out that function with certain periodicity were considered like such. From our point of view, it would be necessary to differentiate the figure of the columnist or chronicler, who approaches interpretive and opinion genres, from that of the journalist, who has been trained in journalism studies, in the last decades, established as a university degree, as bachelor’s degrees or degrees. As Vadillo Bengoa, Marta-Lazo and Cabrera Altieri (2010: 188) point out, “It is already a reality that the possession of the degree is a sign of identity and recognition by the Federation of Associations of Journalists of Spain.”
In conclusion, Olariaga and his contemporaries can be considered pioneers or predecessors of analysis and argumentation as narrative formulas, columnists of their time and predecessors of economic journalism, in the form of opinion and interpretation.

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