In November, 2020, the Spanish Government formed a committee to combat disinformation and the “deliberate, large-scale and systematic dissemination of false messages” that “seek to influence society for self-serving and spurious purposes”. Faced with criticism for tending towards censorship, the government claims that the plan is aligned with the European Democracy Action Plan.
A Committee recommendation and joint cybersecurity group working on misinformation and election misinformation were adopted in March 2018. In the non-binding recommendation, the Committee requested that the government shall cooperate with the EU in developing strategies against misinformation. The proposal was voted down by the left-wing coalition. In addition, in November 2018, Russia signed a pact with Spain to create a joint cybersecurity group. The move came after Spanish ministers accused Russia of spreading misinformation about the Catalan referendum.
Following this commitee recommendation, Spain commissioned the National Cybersecurity Council to combat disinformation in May 2018 and eventually created a specific body to combat disinformation before the 2019 elections. More recently, the CCN-Cert, an organisation of the Spanish intelligence has become involved in the fight against disinformation, which is understood as part of a cyber defence in the broadest sense.
Hate crimes are punishable under Article 510 of the Criminal Code, and no major changes have been made to this law. The Spanish Criminal Code previously only recognized anti-Semitism as a specific hate crime, but the recognition of crimes against the Roma community was recently included in the description of crimes when collecting statistics. Cyber-bullying and cyber-sexual harassment are recognised in Spanish law as forms of harassment on the Internet.
