El Nacional has the largest audience of all Catalan digital newspapers. This October saw 9.5 million users make 32.5 million visits to the site for almost 80 million page views, according to figures from analytics firm OJD. In each of these metrics, El Nacional equals or beats the figures of all the other digital newspapers published from Catalonia together.
In comparison to the other Spanish online news outlets they monitor, it comes fifth in terms of unique users, third in number of visits and second in page views. In the last case that puts elnacional.cat behind only elespanol.com and ahead of eldiario.es and publico.es, both older, which publish in only a single language and with staff of twice the size of El Nacional.
According to the figures, El Nacional has more monthly unique users (9.5 million) than the other Catalan digital newspapers monitored by OJD together (8.7 million): Nació Digital (3 million), Ara (2.9), Món (1.8), El Punt Avui (1) and the Catalan version of El Periódico (0.7). OJD doesn't offer numbers for La Vanguardia, El Pedriódico in Spanish or VilaWeb. El Nacional only loses its first place if Crónica Global (2.8 million) is included, written in Barcelona but in Spanish.
El Nacional, founded and edited by José Antich, also passes the total of the others in the other metrics. For page views, it had 79.3 million in comparison to 54.1 million (NacióDigital.cat (20.2 million), Ara.cat (17.1), Mon.cat (8.2), ElPuntAvui.cat (4.4) and ElPeriodico.cat (4.2). As for visits, the numbers are 32.5 million against 27.5 million, or 32.7 million adding in Crónica Global. These metrics include the editions of the different news sites in all languages, except for El Periódico, for whom OJD only provide figures for the Catalan version.
The choice for the election
El Nacional was also the Catalan news source of choice for information on last weekend's Spanish general election, as it has been during the independence process since the referendum, especially during the trial in the Supreme Court. Specifically, according to OJD, it had 553,000 unique users and 2.5 million page views on Sunday, polling day, alone. That put it ahead of NacioDigital.cat (260,000 and 835,000), Ara.cat (231,000 and 741,000) and ElMon.cat (103,000 and 208,000). That day, of all the digital newspapers in Spain OJD monitors, it came sixth in unique users and fourth in page views.