But it is the less obvious pressures on the news media business that have also sown increasing worry about free expression in Spain and in particular whether Spain’s establishment newspapers — once the most influential in the country — have been brought to heel.

Many in the industry say the formidable combination of government and financial pressures has blunted their ability to cover any range of conflicts of interest among big business and politicians at a time of multiplying financial and political scandals that emerged after the onset of Spain’s debt crisis.

“The newspapers are in the hands of creditors, and also in those of a government that has helped convince the creditors that the papers should be kept alive rather than just asphyxiated because of their debts,” said Miguel Ángel Aguilar, a veteran Spanish journalist who founded his own publication, Ahora, in September.

“This is a situation of dependency that has done terrible damage to the credibility of the media in this country,” he said.

While many journalists like him are competing with the Spanish news media’s old guard by setting up independent and mostly online publications whose coverage has often been more aggressive, even they acknowledge that their effect has so far been limited.