SEPI Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales

• The image on the stamp reproduces a typewriter’s keyboard and a computer, and it includes the slogan: The world current news in Spanish
• It has a 300,000 units print, with a postal value of 0.38 €

CORREOS has presented today Wednesday at the Casa del Lector (Matadero de Madrid, Center for Modern Art), the stamp which the postal institution dedicates to AGENCIA EFE as part of its Efeméride series. The stamp, which slows the image of a typewriter’s keyboard and a computer over the figure with the anniversary of the setup of the news agency, appears on a Premium sheet of stamps, and seeks to bring to memory the work which this entity carries out in our society.

The Under Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations, Ms. Pilar Platero Sanz; the Under Secretary of Public Works, Mr. Mario Garcés Sanagustín; Agencia EFE’s Chairperson, Mr. José Antonio Vera; and CORREOS’ Chairperson, Mr. Javier Cuesta Nuin, chaired the homage paid to the news agency. The ceremony was attended also on behalf of SEPI by the Director in charge of Participated Companies, Mr. José Ángel Partearroyo Martín; by the Deputy Director for Communication’s participated companies, Ms. Mª Jesús Garrido Solís; and by the Deputy Director for Communication’s participated companies, Ms. Caridad de Andrés Fernández.

The fourth largest news agency in the world

The news agency EFE was setup in Burgos, on January 1939, and that very year it moved its headquarters to Madrid. Currently it is the fourth larges multimedia news agency in the world, and the first Spanish-speaking one. It has at its service more than 3,000 professionals, from 60 countries, distributed on the delegations on 120 countries, who inform on time about everything which takes place around the world. With information support for the press, radio, television, and internet,

Agencia EFE distributes more than three Million pieces of news per year to communication media on the five continents.

Agencia EFE is a public limited company in which the State is the main shareholder, and since 2001 it is attached to the state-owned industrial holding company Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales (SEPI).

The information world and CORREOS

The origin of the press agencies is closely linked to the postal and telegraphic services. In 1832 the entrepreneur M. Havas sets up in Paris an agency which bears his own name and which receives information from many capitals, through its correspondents, and which sells it to the Paris newspapers and to the Government itself. The agencies Havas and Reuter which operated in their early years in Germany, even used at first carrier pigeons for sending faster their news, and specifically the French news agency even received stock exchange information through its optical telegraphic network.

In Spain the entrepreneur and journalist Nilo María Fabra set up in 1865 in Madrid a correspondents’ organization dedicated to supplying news to provincial newspapers and which became the first Spanish news agency. Besides making use of the State-owned mail and telegraph networks, Mr. Fabra resorted to other alternatives, such as a carrier pigeon service, he built a semaphore tower at Tarifa, with flags signals, for communicating with the ships which crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and he set up an electrical telegraph station in Madrid. Finally, his organization had its own service of ridding messengers who went from the above mentioned telegraphic station to the main newspapers in the capital.

The stamp which is today dedicated to the Agencia EFE is an offset print with four colors, on gummed paper. It has a 40.9 x 28.8 mm size, with a nominal value of 0.38 €. It has a 300,000 units print, and the sheet of stamps has been printed with the new Premium format, with motifs and illustrations which cover all the sheet, both the areas for the stamps and the margins which frame the design, and it includes literary quotations or descriptive texts. The stamp’s image reproduces a computer’s keyboard, and it shows the slogan “The world current news in Spanish”.

Other stamps dedicated to the Spanish language

CORREOS has issued 64 stamps linked to the information world regarding different areas. From a technical point of view, several stamps issued were dedicated to optical lines, the telegraph, the telephone, or to the telegraphy. Homage has also been paid to the Press, Radio, Television, as well as to personalities from politics, literature, or painting and, as might be foreseen, the importance of a number of newspapers were included, as happened at the World Philatelic Exhibition Madrid 2000, when a stamp dedicated to the newspapers with the largest print - El País, El Mundo, ABC, La Vanguardia and El Correo – was issued.

Finally, the postal company has paid tribute through stamps to centenary-old Spanish newspapers, such as Faro de Vigo, El Norte de Castilla, Diario de Cádiz, Las Provincias, El Adelanto, El Correo Gallego, El Comercio, La Voz de Galicia, Diario Palentino, Diario de Pontevedra, Levante, La Rioja, La Vanguardia, ABC, El Correo de Andalucía, La Verdad, El Diario Montañés, Diario de Burgos, Heraldo de Aragón, Última Hora, Diario de Ibiza, Diario de León, Diario de Ávila, El Adelantado, La Voz de Avilés, El Progreso, El Día de Tenerife.

Correos/Grupo SEPI

Correos belongs to Grupo SEPI, a corporate holding which includes a total of 16 state-owned companies in which it has a direct, majority shareholding participation, with a final workforce of more than 74,000 professionals in 2013, and to which is attached the state-owned radio-and-television corporation, as well as one public foundation. Besides, it has direct minority shareholding participations in a further 9 companies, and indirect ones in more than 100 companies.

Correos is the biggest company in Spain, both in terms of its presence and territorial scope, with around 10,000 points for gaining access to its services. It distributes over 4,000 Million shipments per year, and it reaches daily 28 Million households, companies and institutions. It has a human team made up by about 53,000 professionals who work to provide comprehensive solutions and a wide range of high-quality products adapted to the different customer categories, both in packaging and direct marketing, and in postal services based on the new technologies and financial services.