MADRID, November 10, 2026 — Spain’s youth minister has asked the country’s Data Protection Agency to suspend TikTok’s operations until the platform removes child sexual abuse material, following an investigation that documented 1,183 explicit posts and at least 48 million views. The request could lead to a TikTok suspension in Spain, but it is not an immediate shutdown: the regulator and prosecutors must decide what action the law permits.
Minister Sira Rego made the request after the nonprofit fact-checking organization Maldita.es published findings from a 35-day investigation of material circulating on TikTok. The organization said it identified more than 20,000 profiles that commented on or shared the material, with more than 7,000 operating in Spanish. Those figures describe accounts identified during the investigation; they are not a finding that every account belongs to a confirmed offender.
The scale of the findings has increased pressure on the Spanish government to act. Rego also referred the matter to prosecutors, while Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the government would consider suspending a social network if that became necessary to protect children’s rights. TikTok did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Spanish newspaper El País reported that company representatives had met the minister and said they would study the situation, but that she had not been given a concrete technical plan or an offer of an independent audit.
The distinction between a political demand and a legal order is central. The youth minister has asked the Data Protection Agency to consider an exceptional suspension, but the agency must assess the evidence and its statutory powers. Prosecutors will consider whether criminal offenses have been committed and whether the platform or individuals may have legal responsibility. No nationwide suspension order had been announced when the request was made.
Maldita.es said it collected and analyzed TikTok posts between September 11 and October 15. It identified 1,183 posts containing explicit child sexual abuse material, which together had accumulated about 48 million views. The organization also found networks of accounts that used comments and profile activity to solicit, exchange, or direct users towards illegal material. It said some of the posts had remained online for months before the investigation was published.
The nonprofit separately tested how TikTok responded when it reported a sample of 50 posts. It said the platform removed five and blocked another 13 only for users in Spain. The remaining cases were not all treated in the same way, and the results reflect the sample and the period in which the reports were assessed. The organization argued that the scale of views and the activity of related accounts raised questions about whether the platform’s moderation and recommendation systems were working effectively.
Maldita.es also said that some material was discoverable through searches and recommendations rather than being confined to obscure corners of the service. Its report described accounts that used comments to direct people towards other channels or to request further material. The investigation did not establish that every account had the same role or that every user who interacted with a post was engaged in criminal activity. The number of profiles is an indicator of the scale of the network the nonprofit observed, not a court finding about individual guilt.
Reuters reported that TikTok later restricted two search terms identified by the investigation for users in Spain. The same terms could still lead to the material when searched from other European countries, according to Maldita.es’ follow-up. The change shows that some action was taken after the findings were made public, but it does not establish that the wider set of posts, accounts, or pathways had been removed across the platform.
Spain’s Data Protection Agency now faces a request to consider whether the service should be suspended in the country. The agency’s decision will depend on the evidence, the legal basis for intervention, and the proportionality of any measure. A temporary suspension would have consequences for millions of users, creators, and businesses that rely on TikTok, so the regulator would need to distinguish between the platform’s general operation and the specific systems or processing practices alleged to have enabled the spread of illegal material.
The criminal investigation is a separate track. The Ministry of Youth and Children has asked prosecutors to examine possible offenses linked to the material and its circulation. Prosecutors can assess the conduct of people who produce, upload, trade, or distribute illegal content and consider whether any platform practices should be examined under Spanish law. The existence of illegal posts does not by itself prove that a company directed or knowingly enabled the criminal conduct, but it can raise questions about the speed and effectiveness of its response after receiving reports.
The European Union’s Digital Services Act also creates obligations for very large online platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks, including risks to minors and the spread of illegal content. The European Commission has separately scrutinized TikTok’s recommendation systems and design features. That process is not the same as Spain’s request to its national data regulator, but it adds to the pressure on the company to demonstrate that its systems do not amplify harmful material or make it difficult for users to report abuse.
Spain has already taken a broader approach to online child protection. In February, the government asked prosecutors to investigate X, Meta, and TikTok over alleged distribution of AI-generated child sexual abuse material and manipulated sexual images of minors. Sánchez has also backed restrictions on social media access for children under 16 and legislation intended to strengthen protections for minors in digital environments. The latest request is more specific: it concerns the material documented on TikTok and the possibility of suspending the service until the platform addresses the problem.
TikTok’s immediate public response to the latest request was not available in the Reuters report. The company’s community rules prohibit child sexual exploitation and abuse material, but the central question raised by Maldita.es is whether those rules were enforced consistently and quickly enough. A platform can have a formal ban and still fail to prevent illegal material from being uploaded, recommended, shared, or reappearing through new accounts. Regulators will need evidence about how the company detected the content, what it removed, how it handled reports, and whether its systems identified connected accounts.
Recommendation systems complicate the issue because a post can reach a large audience without being shared directly by every viewer. Maldita.es argued that the volume of views and the pattern of account activity suggested that TikTok’s systems helped surface some material. That is an allegation based on the nonprofit’s investigation, not a final technical finding by a regulator. A full assessment would need to examine how recommendations were generated, what signals were used, whether the content was reported, and how the platform responded after it became aware of it.
There is also a distinction between removing an individual post and dismantling the network around it. If an account is removed but connected profiles remain active, users may continue to circulate illegal material through new uploads or external channels. Effective enforcement may require identifying repeat offenders, preserving evidence for investigators, reporting suspected crimes, and limiting the ways accounts can contact or direct minors to other services. The Spanish investigation has put those questions into the public debate, but the regulator and prosecutors will have to determine which failures can be established under law.
Any suspension would raise questions about proportionality and cross-border enforcement. TikTok operates across the EU single market, so the regulator would need to explain the legal basis, duration, and scope of a national restriction and consider whether narrower measures could address the risk.
Parents, schools, and child-protection groups need clear reporting channels and support for children who may have encountered the material. Those measures cannot replace effective platform moderation or enforcement by public authorities.
The next steps will be the Data Protection Agency’s response to Rego’s request, the prosecutors’ assessment of the evidence, and any further technical explanation from TikTok. Maldita.es has published follow-up findings about the platform’s response to search terms, while Spanish officials have made clear that a suspension remains an option rather than an order already in force. The figures in the investigation are serious, but legal responsibility and the scope of any remedy must be established through the relevant processes.
Spain’s move turns a content-moderation investigation into a test of how far national authorities can go when a global platform is accused of failing to protect minors. A suspension would be an exceptional step, with consequences well beyond the posts identified by the nonprofit. The immediate question is whether regulators can compel effective action quickly enough to protect children while preserving a clear legal process for the company, users, and people whose safety is at stake.
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