Spain

Spain entered an early general election after a legislature defined by unstable parliamentary support and repeated failures to pass a new state budget. At the proposal of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the Cortes were dissolved by Royal Decree 806/2026 of 5 October 2026 and elections called for 29 November. Sánchez said a broader progressive majority was needed to continue the government’s programme.

The XV legislature ended without approving a single new state budget, the first time this has happened in Spain’s democratic period. The 2023 accounts remained in force throughout the legislature and were extended for a third consecutive year from January 2026, the eleventh budget rollover since the democratic transition. The government’s parliamentary position had weakened further after Junts announced in November 2025 that it was breaking with the executive and would oppose government legislation. Political pressure intensified in June 2026 when the Supreme Court sentenced former transport minister José Luis Ábalos to 24 years and three months in prison for offences including criminal organisation, bribery, influence-peddling and embezzlement, with a maximum effective term of 16 and a half years.

Four autonomous communities also went to the polls between December 2025 and May 2026, all of them previously governed by the Popular Party. Extremadura voted early on 21 December 2025 after the regional government failed to secure a 2026 budget; the PP won 29 of the Assembly’s 65 seats. Aragón followed on 8 February 2026, returning 26 PP deputies in the 67-seat Cortes, and Castilla y León on 15 March, where the PP won 33 of 82 seats. In Andalucía on 17 May, the PP won 53 of 109 seats and lost the absolute majority it had secured in 2022.

None of the four results left the PP able to govern alone. PP and Vox subsequently formed coalition or governing agreements in all four regions: Extremadura on 16 April, Aragón on 22 April, Castilla y León on 3 June and Andalucía on 2 July. The sequence strengthened Vox’s role in regional government.

Spain ranked 29th of 180 in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index, with a score of 75.42. It ranked first on RSF’s safety indicator but only 40th on the economic indicator. RSF identified political polarisation, abusive litigation, political pressure on journalists and incomplete implementation of the European Media Freedom Act as continuing weaknesses.

The legislative response remained incomplete when the Cortes were dissolved. A bill adapting Spanish media and digital regulation to the European Media Freedom Act was sent to Congress in July 2025 and was still in parliamentary passage. Among other measures, it would have expanded media-ownership transparency beyond audiovisual outlets by bringing press providers within the scope of Law 13/2022 of 7 July, created a broader state register of media-service providers under the CNMC and given the regulator new EMFA-related powers. The dissolution caused that parliamentary bill to lapse.

Two other media reforms had not progressed as far. A proposed Public Sector Advertising Law would have limited public-sector advertising received by a media outlet or platform to 35% of its annual net turnover, subject to exceptions for smaller local media; the CNMC reported on the draft on 30 April 2026, recommending that all public income count towards the cap. A separate organic-law proposal would have given statutory protection to journalistic sources and restricted the use of intrusive surveillance against journalists. Both remained at the anteproyecto stage rather than becoming enacted legislation.

The European Media Freedom Act has applied generally since 8 August 2025. The CNMC nevertheless states that the additional powers assigned to national regulators by the Regulation still require an enabling Spanish law, which remained pending when the legislature ended.

State Media Monitor maps 17 Spanish state-media entries: the national broadcaster RTVE and news agency EFE, 13 autonomous-community broadcasters, and the public broadcasters of Ceuta and Melilla. Public ownership and heavy reliance on public funding are common across the sample, the CNMC put RTVE’s public share of financing above 90%, but governance arrangements are not uniform. RTVE’s Board is elected by Parliament, most regional broadcasters have boards elected or designated through their autonomous legislatures, while EFE remains a state company owned through SEPI with a different appointment structure.

Political vulnerability in appointments is nevertheless widespread. Several broadcasters allow an absolute or simple parliamentary majority to make appointments when a reinforced majority cannot be reached, while others require qualified majorities without a fallback. RTVE illustrates the first model: the 2024 reform retained a two-thirds majority for the first ballot but introduced an absolute-majority second round, a mechanism used weeks later to elect the current Board. CEXMA in Extremadura illustrates the second: its Board requires two-thirds of the Assembly, with no lower-majority fallback.

These structures identify opportunities for political influence, but State Media Monitor does not classify an outlet as State-Controlled merely because a government or governing bloc can appoint its leadership. The decisive distinction is editorial practice: whether the available evidence establishes a sustained editorial line imposed, approved or otherwise controlled by state authorities. Different forms of evidence have therefore produced different outcomes.

At CCMA in Catalonia, a professional ethics commission found in 2022 that TV3 news management had breached its professional code in its treatment of a journalist who alleged ideological pressure. The broadcaster was moved to State-Controlled in 2024 and remains there.

At IB3 in the Balearic Islands, an SMM content analysis covering March to May 2025 found markedly more favourable treatment of the governing PP than an April 2024 analysis had identified, prompting a downgrade to State-Controlled in 2025. The evidence strengthened in September 2026 when Director General Josep Maria Codony acknowledged on 24 September before Parliament that a report had been altered because he considered its original treatment partisan, prompting the journalists’ union to reject his explanation and call for his resignation.

At RTVA in Andalucía, repeated findings by the broadcaster’s elected Professional Council, an independent examination of television news and documented management intervention in a report that had already been prepared support its State-Controlled classification. The evidence concerns recurring decisions about news selection, prominence and treatment rather than ownership alone.

In Galicia, the classification of CSAG as State-Controlled rests on a longer cumulative record: newsroom protests dating from 2018, work stoppages in 2024, specific allegations of management interference, a 2026 court judgment concerning retaliation against a journalist active in the broadcaster’s editorial-independence campaign, and renewed objections from news staff in September 2026.

Other evidence has not been sufficient to trigger the same conclusion. RTVE’s national television news was almost evenly divided between government and opposition blocs in CNMC measurements for 2024, at 50.20% to 49.80%. Complaints by political parties, unadjudicated allegations or the mere capacity of a parliamentary majority to appoint management do not by themselves establish State-Controlled status.

Five Spanish entries carry provisional classifications. RTVE and Aragón’s CARTV moved from State-Controlled to provisional Independent State-Funded and State-Managed (ISFM) status in the 2026 review because the evidence examined did not establish a continuing state-imposed editorial pattern. EiTB remains ISFM but is now provisional following a dispute concerning a governing-party document. Radio Televisión Madrid and Radiotelevisión Canaria remain provisionally State-Controlled pending further evidence.

Movement has therefore occurred in both directions. Catalonia was downgraded in 2024; Ceuta moved to State-Controlled that year and returned to ISFM in 2025 after a content analysis by the Media and Journalism Research Center found no pro-government bias; RTVE and Aragón moved back into the independent family in 2026.

The Spanish cases also expose a methodological problem: editorial independence is easier to assess where institutions exist that record interference. RTVE has elected News Councils capable of publishing detailed findings. EiTB has a newsroom statute and elected professional councils, as does EFE. Andalucía also has an elected Professional Council, while Catalonia combines internal professional bodies with an external audiovisual regulator.

Those mechanisms are much weaker or absent elsewhere. Madrid’s statutory Newsroom Council was removed in 2023. Ceuta’s statutory advisory editorial body was revived in 2021 after more than a decade of inactivity but has no publicly documented activity since. The laws governing Murcia, Extremadura and Melilla establish no journalists’ news council. At the external level, only Catalonia, the Valencian Community and Andalucía maintain regional audiovisual regulators.

This creates an important asymmetry in the Spanish sample. An ISFM classification can reflect affirmative evidence of editorial independence, but in some cases it also reflects the absence of sufficiently strong evidence establishing sustained state control. The distinction matters. Weak accountability mechanisms should not themselves be converted into proof of editorial capture, but they make capture harder to detect and document.

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