Academia Audio, the Spanish-language audio network, with Luis Miguel Pedrero Esteban 🇪🇸

Eurowaves #35 Interview

Luis Miguel Pedrero Esteban is a journalist, lecturer, and researcher at Universidad Francisco de Vitoria in Madrid, Spain. He is the co‑editor of AudioGen 3x3, a weekly newsletter about the radio and podcast industry in Spain and Latin America and a board member of the Spanish‑language Audio Academy.

You can connect with Luis on LinkedIn here.

What is your podcasting origin story?

I have spent the last 30 years teaching and researching radio and, more recently, podcasting, and digital audio. Before the internet, students were fascinated by radio: they listened mainly for the music, and they fell in love with it when, during their practical sessions in the studio, they discovered the magic of telling stories through sound. That fascination faded as smartphones, social media and streaming platforms took over their attention, but it has come back with podcasting, which is once again motivating them and sparking their curiosity and enthusiasm. I do not host a podcast myself; my role is to teach its narrative and creative possibilities, both in the classroom and through my academic research and a weekly industry newsletter.

What is the Spanish‑language Audio Academy and how did it come about? Did you draw inspiration from any international models when building the community?

The Academy of Arts, Sciences, and Industry of Spanish‑Language Audio is a non‑profit association that represents, supports, and gives legitimacy to the professionals who are building a new creative and cultural industry: Spanish‑language spoken digital audio. Our ambition is that, just as Spanish‑language film, music, and television now have strong professional structures, spoken audio in Spanish will also have its own clear and recognized voice on the international stage.

The Academy’s goal is to give visibility, support, and prospects to everyone in this ecosystem: producers, narrators, platforms, publishers, writers, sound designers, technicians, voice actors and academic researchers. In terms of inspiration, we look to the Academies that already exist in TV, film, and music, and to audio bodies created in other countries, such as PIA in France or AudioUK in the United Kingdom, which have shown how a collective voice can strengthen studios, producers, and independent creators.

How does the Academy hope to bridge traditional broadcasters with the new wave of independent and digital podcasters?

Among the Academy’s biggest challenges, I would highlight two. The first is helping the industry clearly identify what is specific to podcasting —its own language, rhythm and listening habits— so that it is not confused with traditional radio shows that are simply repackaged as on‑demand audio.

The second is to promote production standards that distinguish professionals who make a living from audio from those who approach podcasting or audiobooks on a one‑off or experimental basis. Lower technical barriers are great news for creativity, but the Academy focuses on people for whom audio is a craft and a profession, and who need a shared space for recognition, networking, and advocacy.

Which specific feature of the podcast industry in Spain do you think is helping the market grow more than in other countries, and which one might be holding it back?

When the professional platform Podium Podcast launched in 2016 —interestingly, driven by Spain’s main radio group PRISA, owner of brands such as Cadena SER and LOS40—, it played a key role in producing and distributing innovative titles, from audio fiction and documentary series to long‑form feature reporting. It also helped audiences discover and understand the podcast format beyond simple catch‑up radio.

Rising interest in podcasts and audiobooks then attracted new international platforms (Podimo, Audible), boosted, or brought in local ones (iVoox, Sonora) and encouraged big players like Spotify and Amazon Music to commission original shows in Spanish. This, in turn, fueled the growth of small production companies and marketing agencies that specialize genres and audiences.

Between 2022 and 2024, the industry experienced a real boom, which slowed down in 2025 as major platforms cut back investment and shifted their focus to video podcasts, reducing their bets on narrative audio. In short, Spain’s podcast market has grown very fast thanks to the push from large media groups and platforms, but that same dependence on a few big actors also explains how abrupt the slowdown can be when their priorities change.

Please share 2–3 recommendations of Spanish podcasts that you feel are underrated.

I would highlight the whole catalogue of El Extraordinario, a studio focused on narrative podcasts and audio fiction whose work has been recognized with awards at festivals around the world. Among their titles, I would mention Crímenes, el musical, an original true‑crime series that stages murders from 18th‑ and 19th‑century Spain as if they were a theatre musical; La historia es ayer, a documentary series that looks at social change through the eyes of an archaeologist; and the fiction podcasts Blum, a branded podcast for the Swiss tourism agency available in Spanish, English and Chinese, and Simulacro, written by Julio Rojas, the creator of Caso 63.

With a very different approach, I also find the work of De eso no se habla outstanding. Their documentaries give voice to silences, to the stories that hide behind them, and to what happens when those silences are finally broken. It is the perfect project to understand how audio can handle nuance, slow pacing and contained emotion in ways that very few other media can match.

Thank you, Luis!