RSF saddened by death of Spanish section’s president

Everyone at Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is deeply saddened to learn that Malén Aznárez, the president of RSF’s Spanish section, died on 30 july after a long illness. Journalism and media freedom have lost a great voice. RSF offers its condolences to her family and friends.

A journalist with a long and varied career in Spain, Malén Aznárez was elected vice-president of RSF Spain’s board of governors in 2008 and had been its president since June 2011. She had been fighting her illness for several months.

“We are extremely saddened by the loss of our colleague and friend Malén Aznárez,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “Malén had been putting her extraordinary energy and experience at the service of our organization and, above all, at the service of media freedom for nearly ten years and she continued the fight until her last breath.”

Born in Santander in 1943 and a graduate of the Official School of Journalism in Madrid in 1972, Malén Aznárez had a long and brilliant journalistic career in Spain. In the 1980s, she became the first woman to head a state-owned media group, Medios de Comunicación del Estado. She went on to be head of news at the national radio broadcaster, Radio Nacional de España, and national news editor at the magazine El Globo, before joining the El País group in 1998.

She worked at El País until 2014 as a reporter, as social section editor, as the newspaper’s ombudsman and for the magazine’s science section. She was also a professor at the El País Journalism School.

When she joined RSF Spain as vice-president in 2008, the then president, María Dolores Massana, gave her two tasks – drafting the RSF Spain Annual Report, the publication of which has come to be a major event in Spain, and coordinating campaigns in support of imprisoned journalists.

After taking over as president in 2011, she developed the section’s activities with the help of a team of volunteers ­– supporting journalists in difficulty, assisting freelancers, lobbying for the independence of the state-owned media, and lobbying for media freedom in Spain and the rest of the world.

Her biggest successes include her fight against Spain’s “Gag Law” (restricting the right of Spanish journalists to cover protests and photograph the police) and her fight for the release of three Spanish journalists who were kidnapped in Syria in 2015 and who were finally freed the following year. She also sponsored Dawit Isaak, a Swedish-Eritrean journalist imprisoned in Eritrea since 2001 (see her last article on Dawit Isaak, published in El País on 31 March 2017).

Her campaigning will not be in vain. Everyone at RSF will remember the determination, courage and commitment of this great journalist and media freedom advocate, and will share in the sorrow of her friends and family.