{"id":67386,"date":"2026-09-21T06:51:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T04:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=67386"},"modified":"2026-09-21T06:51:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T04:51:41","slug":"the-sanchez-governments-digital-putinism-blocking-a-website-without-a-court-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2026\/09\/21\/the-sanchez-governments-digital-putinism-blocking-a-website-without-a-court-order\/","title":{"rendered":"The S\u00e1nchez government's digital Putinism: blocking a website without a court order"},"content":{"rendered":"

The coalition government of socialists and communists led by Pedro S\u00e1nchez is veering in an increasingly dangerous authoritarian direction.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine a politician forbidding your children from reading books and censoring the ones you read?<\/a><\/rel>
\nPedro S\u00e1nchez attacks the right to privacy and compares using a social network with buying a gun<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n

Last week, many Spanish users lost access to the website<\/strong> archive.today<\/a>, as well as to other mirror sites for the same service, such as archive.ph, archive.is, and archive.li. When attempting to access archive.today, a page from the Ministry of Culture's website<\/a> now appears, displaying the following statement in red letters against a black background: \"You are attempting to access an illegal website<\/strong>.\"<\/em> The notice, in Spanish, continues as follows:<\/p>\n

\"Access to this page has been blocked by a Resolution of the Second Section of the Intellectual Property Commission<\/strong> for illegally facilitating access to content protected by intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n

By accessing content protected by intellectual property rights that has been made public without authorization, you are contributing to illegal and criminal activity<\/strong> and putting your security\u2014as well as that of your data and devices\u2014at risk.<\/p>\n

Conversely, if you choose to access content from legal sources<\/strong>, you contribute to artistic creation, the improvement of cultural products, and economic development.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the bottom of this notice appears the logo of the aforementioned Second Section of the Intellectual Property Commission\u2014a body under the Ministry of Culture<\/strong>, currently led by Minister Ernest Urtasun of the far-left Sumar coalition. The Ministry of Culture has already added the site in question to its list of blocked websites.<\/a> Until now, Archive.today was a tool widely used by Spanish journalists<\/strong> to obtain an automatic copy of a specific webpage at a given moment, thereby preserving a record of its content in case the site ceased to exist or altered its original publication.<\/p>\n

Significantly, a few days ago, Xataka.com noted that only two other countries block Archive.today: Russia and Communist China<\/a>. Coincidentally, both of those countries are dictatorships.<\/strong> Xataka.com also noted that Australia and New Zealand had blocked the site as well but ultimately lifted the ban.<\/p>\n

It is worth recalling that Article 20 of the Spanish Constitution recognizes and protects the right to \"freely express and disseminate thoughts, ideas, and opinions<\/em><\/strong> through speech, writing, or any other means of reproduction\"<\/em> and to \"freely communicate or receive truthful information by any means of dissemination<\/strong>.\"<\/em> Clause 5 of that article specifies the procedure for limiting this right: \"The seizure of publications, recordings, and other means of information may only be ordered by a court decision<\/strong>.\"<\/em><\/p>\n

As is evident from the notice displayed when attempting to access it, the blocking of the aforementioned website was carried out by order of a body within the Ministry of Culture and without a court order<\/strong>. Consequently, this blockade constitutes a clear violation of Clause 5 of Article 20 of the Spanish Constitution. If there is a conflict between the right to freedom of information and intellectual property rights, that matter must be decided by a judge<\/strong>, not by a government agency acting under the orders of a politician. Indeed, the procedure followed by the Ministry of Culture is characteristic of a dictatorship<\/strong>\u2014the type of regime where a politician orders a website to be blocked without recourse to the judicial system.<\/p>\n

In Russia, such digital censorship is carried out by a political body known as Roskomnadzor<\/strong>, which operates under the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media. In Communist China, censorship is enforced by the Cyberspace Administration<\/strong>\u2014also known as the Great Firewall\u2014which answers directly to the Chinese Communist Party. Pedro S\u00e1nchez\u2019s government is already implementing censorship methods in Spain typical of dictatorships.<\/strong> How long will it be before we see similar blocks applied to websites that hold views opposed to the government? Not only has a dangerous precedent been set, but this has occurred with barely any protest<\/strong>, highlighting the alarming direction in which Spain is heading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The coalition government of socialists and communists led by Pedro S\u00e1nchez is veering in an increasingly dangerous authoritarian direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11415,11397],"tags":[27924,12063,8512,2721,27923,16942],"class_list":["post-67386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-plana-english","category-internet-eng","tag-archive-today","tag-censorship","tag-ernest-urtasun","tag-pedro-sanchez-castejon","tag-seccion-segunda-de-la-comision-de-propiedad-intelectual","tag-sumar"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-28 16:34:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}