El Correo (; ) is a leading daily newspaper in Bilbao and the Basque Country of northern Spain. It is among best-selling general interest newspapers in Spain. History and profile The brothers Ybarra y de la Revilla – Fernando, Gabriel and Emilio – founded El Pueblo Vasco ("The Basque People") on 1 May 1910, with Juan de la Cruz as founding editor. The paper supported Vizcaya's young Conservative Party and its editorial line was clerical, Alfonsist monarchist, free press and Basque regional autonomist. The paper's chief competitor in Bilbao was La Gaceta del Norte. Due to these conservative stances, El Pueblo Vasco was shut down by the Spanish Republic government on 17 July 1936, just before the Spanish Civil War. It was almost a year later, on 6 July 1937, when the paper published again, after the fall of Bilbao; it was joined on newsstands by El Correo Español, the official newspaper of the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS, the Spanish fascist party, using the seized presses of the Basque nationalist daily Euzkadi. By order of caudillo Francisco Franco's government on 13 April 1938, the two papers combined as El Correo Español-El Pueblo Vasco, owned by El Pueblo Vasco S.A. but controlled by the Falange. During the first 15 years of Francoist Spain, El Correo acquired its competitors El Noticiero Bilbaíno (1939) and El Diario Vasco (1945). Upon this last purchase, the company's name was changed to Bilbao Editorial S.A. The year 1965 saw El Correo move to its current offices in Calle Pintor Losada, convert to tabloid format and increase the number of pages. In 1976, El Correo for the first time surpassed La Gaceta del Norte in sales, becoming the best-selling newspaper in northern Spain. Also around this time, publisher Javier de Ybarra y Bergé was kidnapped and murdered by rogue elements of the Basque separatist organization ETA. Vatican had a share in El Correo until 1989. El Correo was the promoter of La Vuelta, the yearly bicycle race around Spain, between 1955 and 1978. However, due to ETA organising attacks on the race from the late 1960s, and increasing disorder around the race in the late 1970s during the Spanish transition to democracy, the Royal Spanish Cycling Federation banned the race from passing through the Basque Country, resulting in El Correo'''s announcement in January 1979 that it would no longer organise the race. It was