Coercion against VilaWeb that threatens society as a whole

29.07.2026 - 22:36 | Actualització: 29.07.2026 - 22:37 La Directa reported yesterday that the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) had notified it of a seven-thousand-euro fine and, above all, was demanding that it remove from the internet the reporting that exposed the infiltration of Spanish police officers into social and pro-independence movements. I am writing this editorial opinion for a reason I want to make clear at once: VilaWeb has received the same demand, and we are under the same threat as our colleagues. So today I am not speaking out of solidarity alone. It is worth recalling what this is about, because time has blurred it and Spain has every interest in seeing it erased. For years, several officers of the Spanish police lived among activists in our country under false identities, with no court order authorising it. They joined perfectly legal organisations, attended public assemblies, entered homes and private lives — getting into people’s beds if that was what it took. The Catalan Parliament opened a committee of inquiry when the scandal broke. Questions and motions were tabled in the Spanish Congress. Newspapers around the world covered it. To this day, nobody has answered for any of it. Not a single police commander, not a minister, not one officer, and least of all the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. In fact, as of yesterday, the only proceedings open over this grave violation of citizens’ rights are those brought against the journalists who uncovered it and the journalists and newspapers who reported it. The instrument being used here is a new one, and that is why it is causing justified alarm. This is not a criminal complaint for libel. It is not a suit for infringement of honour or privacy — the classic terrain where Spanish courts have been saying for forty years that freedom of information takes precedence when the information is truthful and of public importance. We always acknowledge the right of anyone who feels wronged by something we publish to take us to court. We regard that as a basic element of democratic accountability. But what is happening now is something else: a mere administrative agency — with no judge involved, no trial and no real adversarial process — is attempting to use financial coercion to force a newspaper to delete what it has already published and what matters to its readers. This is no accident in the Spanish state. Article 85 of the European data protection regulation requires member states to reconcile data protection with freedom of information by law, and to establish exemptions for journalistic processing. Almost every member state did so. Spain did not. And now we can see what that decision means: anyone who appears in an inconvenient news story has an administrative door open to them through which to make it disappear, while journalism lacks the legal shield it enjoys everywhere else in Europe to defend itself. This is not a gap. It is a hole that was deliberately left open. Europe, incidentally, is aware of it. The European media freedom regulation is fully applicable and expressly protects journalistic activity from interference by public authorities. And it is hardly a minor detail today that on 15 July — less than two weeks ago — the European Commission opened infringement proceedings against Spain for failing to transpose the directive against lawsuits intended to silence public participation, known as the anti-SLAPP directive. This is the full picture we need to look at: Brussels is taking Spain to task for failing to protect journalists while Spain’s own data protection agency opens proceedings against our newspapers and issues serious threats against us. In this political assault on La Directa and VilaWeb, what is deeply worrying — more than the possible fine, which matters and which distracts us from other work — is the order to take down the content and the precedent it sets. Because if this goes through, then tomorrow any civil servant, any police officer, any public official named in a piece of investigative journalism will be able to ask the agency to make their name vanish from a truthful, verified and relevant news story, without any need for a trial. And with that, the newspaper archive will stop being an archive and become a list of what those in power are willing to tolerate being published. The death of journalism. At VilaWeb, since 1995, we have seen it all. And we have always fought in defence of press freedom. So today we will say what needs to be said, as plainly as we can: we will defend ourselves by fighting, and we will go as far as we have to in defence of press freedom and of our readers’ right to know the truth. We will file our submissions, and if the ruling stands, we will go as far as necessary. Not because we enjoy litigating, but because what is at stake is the right of citizens to be informed.