The Cultural Statistics Division of the General Technical Secretariat of the Ministry has published the Anuario de estadísticas culturales 2010 [2010 Yearbook of Cultural Statistics], an annual statistical operation which began in 20051, the essential aim of which is to provide a selection of the most significant statistical results in the cultural sphere from various sources, facilitating an understanding of the situation and evolution of culture in Spain, its social value and its role as a generator of wealth and economic development in Spanish society.
A description is given below of the guidelines which were taken into account in the creation of this Yearbook, its reference period, the cultural sphere studied and a brief description of its contents. It should be highlighted that the wide variety of sources and procedures used means that careful reading is required of the methodological notes in each chapter in order to be able to interpret the results correctly.
Regarding the sources of information, the study concentrates on obtaining indicators from statistical operations included in the National Statistics Plan, incorporating information from over twenty sources with these characteristics. Exceptionally, when made necessary by very new or unpublished information, other sources have been used.
The results shown are not simply a compilation of available statistical indicators published in the cultural sphere. On the one hand, specific uses are made of statistical operations in which the published breakdown is not enough to relate them to the cultural sphere. On the other, most chapters incorporate, as well as the most significant results, indicators which enable an evaluation of the phenomenon in a more general context. This is an operation with a high added value deriving from the leverage of existing information provided by a wide range of operations in the statistical system as a whole.
For the reference period of the information, the main indicators are offered for 2005-2009, with the most detailed breakdowns concentrated in the most recent years for which data is available. This parameter, applied generally, presents variants arising from the availability and reference periods of the statistics sources themselves. In any case, both the information gathered in this edition and the annual series of data available can be consulted in the statistical database Culturabase, accessible online (www.mcu.es/estadisticas/CulturaBase.html).
Wherever possible indicators have been incorporated by sex and by Autonomous Community, classification variables which are considered to be priorities.
The delimitation of the sectorial sphere studied in this work was not without complications, arising especially from the close connections between culture and other sectors, not always easy to define, or the difficulty of matching certain classifications. From a theoretical point of view, the starting point considered was the methodological work performed in the European Union since 1997, intended to define a shared cultural sphere, insofar as is possible, for all European countries2.
In each sector the delimitation of the activities which should be considered cultural means a second dimension must be observed: the position of each one in the chain of production of cultural goods and services. Thus, as a complement to determining the sectors, in each one we can distinguish the stages of creation, production, manufacturing, dissemination and distribution, promotion and regulation activities, educational activities and even auxiliary activities, activities which, while they do not produce goods and services in a strict sense, generally have an unmistakable cultural connotation or enable products to be obtained which facilitate the use and enjoyment of cultural goods and services.
For this reason, even when the data refer to a sector, the methodological notes should be read carefully to determine the scope of the specific activities included, and therefore, the stages considered.
The delimitation of the cultural sphere is complemented, in the chapter on the Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura [Satellite Account for Culture], by activities relating to culture which, in principle, should not be considered strictly cultural, but which must be understood in order to understand the creative sector as a whole, activities connected to intellectual property. This sphere largely coincides with the cultural sphere described, if we exclude the heritage sector as a whole and the stages of promotion, regulation and education, and we incorporate the sectors of Computing4, restricting its scope to activities linked to intellectual property, and Advertising.
The specific delimitation of the cultural sphere for estimating the magnitudes presented in the publication was carried out by establishing correspondences between the official classifications used in the statistics providing the general information and the cultural sphere considered initially, with exceptions arising from methodological questions, the availability of breakdowns or their quality.
As for the structure of the Yearbook, it first offers an overview through a series of graphs and summaries showing the most important information from each edition. The core of the publication is a set of chapters distributed as three blocks, on transversal information, sectorial information and synthesis.
The first includes the estimates affecting different cultural sectors: employment and companies, public and private funding, intellectual property, foreign trade, tourism, teaching and cultural habits. The second block offers more specific sectorial information on some of them: heritage, museums, archives, libraries, books, stage arts, music, film and video.
The third block includes a summary of the results of the Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura [Satellite Account for Culture], a statistical operation drawn up by the Ministry of Culture in order to estimate the impact of culture on the Spanish economy as a whole, offering indicators for its contribution to Spanish GDP.
We give a brief overview below of the various chapters of the publication, underlining some of the indicators which can be found in it, and the main sources used to create it.
As mentioned above, the publication begins with transversal indicators. These provide information on cultural employment obtained from a specific use of the Encuesta de Población Activa (INE) [Survey of the Active Population], which considers people with occupations whose economic activities are in the cultural sphere, with the combined criteria of occupations and economic activities, as detailed in the chapter. It also includes indicators relating to companies whose main economic activity is related to culture, obtained from the Directorio Central de Empresas [Central Directory of Companies], the Encuesta Industrial de Empresas [Industrial Survey of Companies] and the Encuesta Anual de Servicios [Annual Survey of Services], projects carried out by the INE.
The yearbook now turns its attention to funding. The publication gives indicators on public spending on culture by the public administrations, its economic nature and recipients, obtained from the Estadística de Financiación y Gasto Público en Cultura [Statistics on funding and public spending on culture] drawn up by the Ministry of Culture (MCU). It also provides estimates of the private spending by households on cultural goods and services and its most significant components, estimated through a specific exploitation of the Encuesta de Presupuestos Familiares (INE) [Family Budget Survey]. Information is included on the amounts collected and distributed by bodies which manage intellectual property rights and exploitation of the information available at the Spanish Intellectual Property Register.
Regarding foreign trade in Cultural Assets, the yearbook offers indicators of the value of imports and exports of characteristic or auxiliary cultural assets, using the information provided by the Estadística de Comercio Exterior [Foreign Trade Statistics] drawn up by the State Tax Agency. The importance of the cultural sector as a driver of other sectors of great economic importance, such as tourism, is demonstrated in the chapter on cultural tourism. This offers details on trips commencing for mainly cultural reasons and the spending associated with them, together with indicators of their weight relative to journeys as a whole, analysed by the three sources of the data using a statistical exploitation: Movimientos Turísticos de los Españoles [Tourism movements by Spaniards], Movimientos Turísticos en Fronteras [Tourism movements at borders] and Encuesta de Gasto Turístico [Survey on tourist spending], drawn up by the Spanish Institute of Tourism Studies.
It also analyses the link between the educational system and culture, showing indicators for the students of the various artistic teaching subjects under the special tax regime: plastic arts and design, music, dance and drama; and those under the general tax regime linked to culture. Most of the information in this chapter is from the Estadística de las Enseñanzas no universitarias [Statistics on non-university teaching] of the Ministry of Education. The results relating to university teaching were obtained from the Estadística de la Enseñanza Universitaria [Statistics on university teaching] drawn up by the INE.
The section on transversal magnitudes concludes with a long chapter on the cultural practices of Spaniards, obtained from the Encuesta de Hábitos y Prácticas Culturales en España [Survey on Cultural Habits and Practices in Spain] (MCU). This offers estimates of the various forms of cultural participation, with details of its many varieties: the reading public, attendance of cultural shows, visits to institutions of cultural interest, artistic activities, etc. and the relationships observed among them, or the form of acquisition of certain products subject to intellectual property rights5.
The chapters on sectorial magnitudes begin with information about our heritage, providing indicators of the set of real estate and moveables registered as Assets of Cultural Interest. This is supplemented by indicators relating to museum equipment, infrastructure, activity and resources, obtained from the Estadística de Museos y Colecciones Museográficas [Statistics on museums and museum collections] (MCU), the state-owned archives managed by the Ministry of Culture, and libraries with information from the Estadística de Bibliotecas [Statistics on libraries] (INE). The chapter on books focuses on offering details of books published each year by Spanish publishers, with information mainly from the Estadística de la Edición Española de Libros con ISBN [Statistics on Spanish publications of books with ISBN] (MCU).
As well as the above, there are indicators relating to the stage arts and music, the creation of music, the infrastructure of stage arts and music, and acting. Most of the information comes from the Estadística de la Edición Musical en España inscrita en el ISMN [Statistics on music published in Spain with ISMN] (MCU), and the Explotación Estadística de las Bases de Datos de Recursos Musicales y de la Danza y de las Artes Escénicas [Statistical use of databases of musical, dance and stage arts resources] (MCU). The yearbook also offers indicators of film and video activity, including those for production, distribution, screening, infrastructure, box office takings and promotion, mainly from the Estadística de Cinematografía: Producción, Exhibición, Distribución y Fomento [Cinematography statistics: production, screening, distribution and development] (MCU).
The yearbook concludes with the section on synthesis of statistics, including a summary of the results obtained from the Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura en España [Satellite Account for Culture in Spain] (CSCE), an annual statistical operation by the Ministry of Culture intended to provide a system of economic information, designed as a satellite to the main system of Cuentas Nacionales Español [Spanish National Accounts] (CNE) enabling estimations of the impact of culture on the Spanish economy as a whole.
The yearbook is available from its first edition online in the statistics section of http://www.mcu.es.
This work continued the excellent work of the publication Las cifras de la cultura en España. Estadísticas e indicadores.2002 [Cultural numbers in Spain. Statistics and indicators.2002], which, as well as giving an overview of the place of culture in Spanish society, established indicators and a methodology which have given the work lasting value. Before that work, in 1995, there had been a work gathering and organising existing data on culture in a statistical publication, Cultura en cifras [Culture in numbers], which was a milestone in understanding the situation of the Cultural Sector.(back)
Establishing some differences with respect to this, including the consideration in the Spanish case of reproduction activities linked to cultural products (graphic arts, sound recordings, etc.) or making musical instruments.(back)
In Computing, as well as the information provided for the Cuenta Satélite de la Cultura [Satellite Account for Culture], , the yearbook incorporates indicators of cultural consumption by households in computer material and the Internet, and habits in the uses of new technologies.(back)
It should be pointed out that the Ministry of Culture has already begun work on a new edition of the Encuesta de Hábitos y Prácticas Culturales en España [Survey of cultural habits and practices in Spain] for 2010-2011, the results of which will be available in the second half of next year.(back)