BBC Mundo website wins top award

BBC Mundo website is visited by about 14 million people monthly

The Spanish-American section of the BBC World Service has been awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in Spanish-language journalism.

A panel of judges voted unanimously to award the Spanish section's website, BBC Mundo, the first-ever Ortega y Gasset prize for online journalism.

It was praised as a beacon of quality journalism since its launch in 1999.

The BBC said the award would serve as an inspiration to its more than 80 Spanish language journalists.

The section's current affairs editor, Hernando Alvarez, said: "I think it's recognition that BBC Mundo is a truly multimedia operation, where you have text, audio and media now all the time."

Freedom and accuracy

In recent years the section, which began broadcasting on shortwave radio in Spanish to Latin America in 1938, has been concentrating its efforts on the internet.

Its website, BBC Mundo, is currently visited by about 14 million people every month.

Other winners this year included the Cuban dissident writer and journalist, Raul Rivero, and the photojournalist, Desiree Martin Peraza.

The Ortega y Gasset Prize was launched by the Madrid-based El Pais newspaper in 1984 in honour of the renowned Spanish journalist Jose Ortega y Gasset.

It aims to highlight the protection of freedom, independence and accuracy as fundamental journalistic values and credit works that have stood out for their quality.