The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) has published the winners of the ¡Bravo! Awards 2025, presented as a recognition of service to human dignity and evangelical values in the field of communication. However, the list itself made public by the CEE reveals a fact that is difficult to overlook: a significant portion of the winners directly belongs to the episcopal communication sphere. Both COPE and TRECE—media integrated into Ábside Media, owned by the Church in Spain—are among the distinguished, which conveys the impression that the institution is once again awarding its own actors.
This distribution, legitimate in form, is less convincing in substance. When the awards intended to highlight communicative excellence fall significantly on media that already depend on the CEE, the feeling of self-promotion inevitably arises.
An internal jury and a not very open image
The jury of this edition is entirely composed of communication managers linked to the Church itself, from the socio-religious area of Ábside Media to the press, cinema, and communication departments of the CEE. This uniformity in the composition of the panel reinforces institutional coherence, but also reduces the plurality of criteria and feeds the perception that the awards respond—at least in part—to the internal logic of the ecclesial system.
Although the CEE emphasizes that these awards seek to distinguish commitment to evangelical values in the media, the predominance of winners from its own environment invites one to wonder if the contest is really fulfilling that mission or if it has become a mechanism of internal validation rather than a broad recognition of the world of communication.
The 2025 edition, in figures and context
The rest of the winners includes Fernando Ónega (Special Award), Javier Cercas (Press), Alauda Ruiz de Azúa (Cinema), Rosalía (Music), among others.
The CEE recalls that the ¡Bravo! Awards reach their 56th edition this year and that the presentation will take place around the World Day of Social Communications on May 17, 2026. The published information shows a combination of external and ecclesial winners, but with an institutional weight that inevitably marks the reading of this edition.