A magazine founded by Torcuato Luca de Tena (1861-1929), it had different stages throughout its history, the first of which went on between 1891 and 1939. After a trip to Germany where he discovered the magazine Fliegende Blätter, Luca de Tena conceived the idea of launching a weekly graphic magazine of quality. The result was Blanco y Negro, a publication based rather on illustrating and entertaining than informing. The constant use of images, the literary collaborations of quality and the progressive introduction of features, soon made it a media of reference. Always going for the novelty, Blanco y Negro was the first Spanish magazine in using colours (1895), paper couché and the technological advances in image printing techniques such as photoengraving and photogravure. The 15th of May 1912 it published the first colour photo in the Spanish media.

In 1910 it had 36 pages number which was extended to 224 during the Republic (1934), although this evolution is not proportional to the use of photo, because when comparing, for instance, the April section of 1912, 57 photos were reproduced in 36 pages, in November 1925 the proportion was 100 in 118 pages, and, in April 1934 the same number of photos corresponded to approximately 224 pages. Dynamic, agile, of a smaller format and easier to use than the usual, and popularly priced (15 cents), it turned into the most important weekly graphic as of the end of the 19^th Century and during the first decade of the 20^th Century, alongside Nuevo Mundo, with which it waged a fierce rivalry. The success of the magazine inspired its founder to transfer the same philosophy into a newspaper, the future ABC (1905).

 [Source: Sánchez Aranda, J.J. i Carlos Barrera (1992): Historia del Periodismo Español. Pamplona: Ediciones de la Universidad de Navarra i Sánchez Vigil, Juan Miguel (2008): Revistas ilustradas en España. Del Romanticismo a la Guerra Civil. Gijón: Ediciones Trea]