Spain's attack on independent media is unprecedented in a core EU state

Since taking office 100 days ago, the Trump administration has taken targeted action against press freedom in the USA. Reporters critical of Trump have been barred from the White House, media outlets have been put under pressure and prison sentences have been threatened against freelance journalists.

State-run foreign broadcasters such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which provide democratic information in crisis regions around the world, are also threatened with closure. 

But autocratic tendencies in media policy and press freedom are also becoming increasingly noticeable in Europe.

Despite all the criticism of Trump's actions, the European Union would do well to put its own house in order and step up its efforts to protect fundamental European values, especially freedom of the press.

An OSCE report released in July 2024 highlights the indispensable role of media freedom in preserving democracy. The report also reinforced studies showing that democracies don’t go to war with one another, linking the freedom of the press to peace and security.

For years, media freedom organisations have been ringing alarm bells about far-right European governments threatening democratic institutions. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, Slovak prime minister Robert Fico, and Italian PM Giorgia Meloni are well-known for their anti-liberal policies restricting the freedom of the press.

But there’s a new aspiring autocrat in Europe who appears to be using the same textbook as Orbán, Fico, and Meloni to crack down on media freedom — except this time, he’s doing so from the Left.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sànchez claims to be protecting Spanish democracy from misinformation and far-right political actors.

But according to his critics, he is using a very real threat to our information landscape to tighten his own grip on power and silence his critics.

'Policing' Spanish journalism?

Sànchez’ crackdown on media freedom began with a July 2024 law claiming to counter "pseudo-media" and restore "truth" to Spain’s media landscape.

The law claims to enforce the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) but has effectively allowed the government to police journalism.

Sànchez’ government then pushed through a restructuring of the board of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE), Spain’s public broadcaster, to install PSOE (Sànchez’ Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party) loyalists on the board.

A similar move at Telefónica in early 2025 installed Sànchez’ ‘political fixer’ as the head of Spain’s largest telecoms group, suggesting a concerted effort by Sànchez to assert political control over Spain’s airwaves.

Sànchez now has his sights set on PRISA Group, owner of Spain’s most influential newspaper, El País.

At an upcoming board meeting, through close allies with shares in the company, he is attempting to oust the company chairman, Joseph Oughourlian, CEO of its largest shareholder, Amber Capital.

The move to remove Oughourlian comes in response to his refusal last year to launch a pro-government left-leaning TV station under the group.

If they are successful and, as is predicted, a government loyalist is installed in Oughourlian’s place, Sànchez will have gained control of the national broadcaster, the company’s largest telecoms business and media buyer and its most important print and online publication. Such control of the audiovisual landscape is unprecedented in one of Europe’s core member states. 

When it comes to the issue of media freedom, Europeans have a double standard.

We rail against Donald Trump’s handling of the media and against the US’s oligarchic media landscape, perhaps most notably Jeff Bezos’ assertion of control over the Washington Post’s opinion section earlier this year.

Yet, in Europe, we too have failed to enforce the freedom of the press, as we can see from the situations in Spain, Hungary, Italy, and Slovakia.

Germany is not exempt from criticism either when it comes to media pluralism. The public media, which is funded by large state budgets, is criticized for one-sided reporting and the crowding out of private media companies in the digital markets of the future, while extreme parties are influencing a growing audience with targeted disinformation on social media.

Our public media offering is largely one-sided and underfunded, leaving a gap filled by extreme voices on social media.

Sànchez’ attempts to shackle the free press should alarm us, because they don’t just threaten Spanish journalists — they threaten Spanish democracy and European security.

By putting Spanish democracy at risk, Sànchez threatens the fragile peace that unity has maintained since the Second World War. His attack on the core democratic institution of the free press compounds his weak support for European defence, and his reluctant support for Ukraine, which remains vital to European security. 

Sànchez's attempts to restrict Spanish press freedom should concern us in Europe, as they not only threaten free reporting, but also Spanish democracy and thus the security and stability of Europe, which is already under attack from targeted disinformation campaigns, particularly from Russia.

Europe will not succeed in defending our liberal values against growing global authoritarianism if more and more member states take an increasingly anti-democratic course, whether from the right or the left.

Media freedom campaigners from the Balkans, a region that is all too familiar with the stifling effects of government control over the free press have called on Spain to lead by example in order to support those in the region, most notably Serbia, protesting against autocracy and aspiring for EU membership.

For the sake of European security and the future of the values upon which the European Union was founded, EU leaders must do more to protect democracy and lead by example. On Saturday (3 May), the world will mark International Press Freedom Day.

The EU would do well to use this global commemoration of media freedom to strongly rebuke Europe’s aspiring autocrats and call on all member states to redouble their efforts to preserve European values — at the core of which is the freedom of the press.