Source: spiked
by Maria Reglero
“When Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced plans to ban social media for under-16s earlier this month, Spaniards could be forgiven for suspecting his real objective was not to limit children’s screentime. Indeed, just days later, Sira Rego, the youth and children’s minister, admitted that the next step would be to ‘restrict and ban’ X (formerly Twitter) for all Spanish users, whose ‘fundamental rights,’ she claimed, ‘are being violated’ by the platform. The prime minister and his so-called progressive coalition have long sought to narrow the boundaries of free speech in Spain. … Former vice-president Pablo Iglesias, whose hard-left Podemos is a junior party in Sánchez’s coalition, has openly proposed expropriating major private social-media platforms and replacing them with a state-owned or publicly controlled network. This has been presented as ‘democratising the space in which public communication occurs.’” (02/11/26)