Spain’s youth minister has intensified Madrid’s clash with Big Tech after suggesting the country may need to curb — or even ban — access to Elon Musk’s social media platform X due to the “flagrant violations of fundamental rights” taking place there.
Speaking Wednesday at a digital activism event in Barcelona, Sira Rego, a United Left politician in Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s governing coalition, said “the next battle would have to be oriented to limit and probably ban Twitter [X]” because the platform has become “a space in which we are seeing flagrant violations of fundamental rights.” Rego flagged controversies including sexual deepfake images generated by X’s AI chatbot Grok.
Rego called the current digital space “undemocratic” and controlled by “a few digital strongmen,” framing possible limits on X as part of a broader push to reclaim sovereignty from powerful tech giants. Her push underscores how Europe’s struggle to police the digital public square is accelerating, with Spain increasingly at the center.