Merry Christmas from Spain’s No1 English newspaper

By Jon Clarke, Publisher and Editor

WE would like to wish all our readers, advertisers and contributors a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous 2011.

Recently the Olive Press has celebrated a birthday. In the general scheme of things the fourth birthday of a business is no great shakes. But, during the worst recession Spain has ever seen, making it this far is actually nothing short of amazing.

Since the Olive Press launched in November 2006, Spain has, quite simply, been turned on its head. After two decades of the Spanish economic gravy train, things came crashing down with an almighty thump. But, while thousands of companies have succumbed to the recession – including the closure of numerous newspapers and magazines – the Olive Press has got bigger every year.

Take 2010 alone; we have expanded from 12,000 to 16,500 papers per edition – an increase of 40 per cent.

Few expatriates in Andalucia can now say they have not heard of the Olive Press. In the words of one advertiser Ken Church, of Riogordo art gallery, we have brought him ‘incredible awareness throughout the whole region’. It is testament to our solid team of reporters and designers, providing original and well-researched content every fortnight that we continue to grow.

Extremely well

However, there is plenty of competition and we are certainly not complacent. We are not content to simply cave in to economic demands and dumb down our paper by stuffing it full of adverts.

And then there is this website theolivepress.es, which Google ranks highly and, which has almost doubled in visitors this year alone.

Oh, and how could we forget our two new websites, www.greenguidespain.com  and our latest addition www.allaboutandaluciaproperty.com. They are both doing extremely well in a difficult and even more competitive market.

Most importantly of all, we want to thank our faithful and reliable advertisers, many of you, who have loyally stayed with us since our first year in business. It is thanks to your faith – and belief in our product – that we are still here today.

We can’t wait till the end of the recession, when we can finally consolidate our position as Spain’s Number One English Newspaper, not just in quality – where we already are – but also in numbers.