Spain’s Digital Transformation Minister, Óscar López, said Wednesday that Madrid will press ahead with a package of rules targeting social media platforms and high-risk artificial intelligence systems, despite intensified lobbying by U.S. tech companies. “The profit of four tech companies cannot come at the expense of the rights of millions,” López told reporters, citing pressure from “strong voices” against proposals that would restrict high-risk artificial intelligence and force platforms to disclose how their recommendation algorithms work.
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This effort has been building for months. In February, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced at the World Government Summit in Dubai that Spain would ban social media for users under 16, an amendment that is now moving forward in parliament as part of an existing bill to protect children in the digital environment.
Sánchez also pledged to criminalize the manipulation of algorithms to boost illegal content and hold administrators personally liable for failures to remove it.
Separately, Spain has approved a draft law restricting artificial intelligence deepfakes, setting 16 as the age of consent for the use of images and banning unauthorized AI-generated likenesses in advertising.
In February, prosecutors opened an investigation into major platforms over child sexual abuse material generated by AI and distributed on their services, Al Jazeera.
The regulatory program is part of a broader European arc. EU lawmakers reached a political agreement in March on amendments to the EU's artificial intelligence law, including a ban on non-consensual deepfakes and a delay of the deadline for high-risk systems to December 2027.
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Madrid has positioned itself as one of the bloc's most progressive capitals in enforcement, in part with the development of the El Escorial as a dominant cloud and AI platform announced by López earlier this year.
The opposition from industry is significant. López did not name the companies he had in mind, but U.S. records show that 11 U.S. technology companies spent about $20 million on federal lobbying in the first three months of 2026, an average of $226,000 a day, according to data reported by industry observers.
The Spanish minister indicated that the same pressure has reached Madrid, where it has so far failed to slow down the legislative timetable.
Not all of Spain's moves have landed cleanly. The under-16 proposal drew a personal attack from Elon Musk, who called Sánchez a "fascist totalitarian" on X in February, and children's rights groups have criticized parts of the package as more showy than workable.
Verification systems that are strong enough to meet López’s stated standard, “real barriers, not just boxes,” remain technically and legally contested across Europe.
What is no longer in doubt is the direction of travel. Australia, France, Denmark and now Spain have all legislated or announced age-restricted access to social platforms within about a year of each other, and Sánchez is pushing for EU-wide adoption through what he calls a “coalition of the digitally willing.”
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The Spanish package, if it passes parliament intact, would be one of the most aggressive national tests of whether such rules can survive both lobbying and legal challenges. The under-16 amendment is expected to face a further parliamentary vote in the coming weeks.
