Sira Rego: “We are in the hands of three technological warlords who dictate rules of the game harmful for our children”

The protection of minors on the internet has become one of the major political fronts of the legislature. The president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, placed this issue among his priorities in the closing appearance of 2025, committing to complete the processing of the Bill for the protection of minors in digital environments. Weeks later, in early February, he raised the bar by announcing his intention to veto access to social networks for minors under 16 years of age through a transactional amendment. In this context of growing political and social pressure to regulate the digital environment, the Minister of Youth and Childhood, Sira Rego, defends in this interview with Demócrata the scope of a norm called to mark a before and after in the protection of young people.

In addition, Rego addresses other priority issues for her Ministry, such as the law on alcohol in minors (of Health), the one on vicarious violence, the one on child protection (which will soon reach the Council of Ministers), the measures regarding child poverty and, in short, several initiatives that demonstrate that childhood policies are a transversal issue and cut across all matters that fill the Government's agenda.

Question: The Bill for the protection of minors in digital environments is one of the most priority issues you have in hand. The committee is pending constitution to begin drafting the report, but everything seems a bit stalled. When is it expected to resume?

Answer: I foresee that it will be now, immediately. From the Ministry of Youth and Childhood we have the utmost interest in it going as quickly as possible; but the dynamics of Congress are those of Congress itself. For our part, maximum willingness and collaboration.

Q: Is there an agreed calendar with the PSOE for the unblocking?

R: We are in the phase of informing the amendments, the contributions… These are more matters of the team's pace. As I was telling you, on our part, there is interest in it going as quickly as possible. Once we have the process that corresponds to the Government to give the ‘ok’ or not to some amendments, it will be immediate. In days, we will be in a position to finish what corresponds to us so that it continues to be processed at a parliamentary level.

Q: Sánchez announced that the use of social media by minors under 16 will be prohibited. As the amendment process was already closed, it will have to be included via a transactional route. If it has been done now, is it that the original text did not contemplate it or did it need to be reinforced?

R: The digital environment is evolving in a very worrying way in a very short time. We have been working on this law since minute zero of the legislature. The law is inspired by the group of 50 experts that we launched from this ministry and a good part of the report's measures are included.

What do I mean by this? That in two years many things have happened at the level of digital environments. Even, issues that from the Ministry of Youth and Childhood we saw very clearly that it was necessary to regulate them and that some colleagues asked us to go a little slower, now there is global awareness. It is a maturation process of the entire society in which we are understanding and seeing the effect that digital environments have on our sons and daughters, who are the most vulnerable population and where the risk of an unregulated digital environment becomes more evident. Therefore, what needs to be done is to change digital environments so that they are safe places, because it is obvious that they are not at this moment.

Q: What would you highlight most about this new regulation? Later we will talk about tools like parental control, but, what novelties does it bring that strengthen protection in these environments?

R: There are elements that common sense now incorporates and that perhaps were not there at the beginning, when we started this process, because they were not settled. I know that in the amendment phase there are some quite powerful ones. And I'm glad, because they come to recover elements that we had already pointed out from the Ministry and finally had not been included. But we are on time.

The most important thing about the law is the global vision it has. It will be the first tool that generally regulates the impact of the digital environment on our lives; protecting children and minors, but also society as a whole.

Now, we have a problem because the digital environment is completely unregulated, it's the law of the jungle for three or four digital strongmen to make money at the expense of the rights of all citizens. Particularly, they do it through child exploitation, data collection, attention fixation, the time you are using your mobile, the hook that certain discourses provoke, the generation of addictive patterns, the formation of addictive personalities and all the repercussions that this has in terms of mental health. What advantage does the law generally have? That in some way, it enters practically all affected fields.

The law proposes a reform of the Penal Code to criminalize offenses that are currently occurring in the digital environment, it proposes limits to the industry, it proposes how to configure the primary care system that attends to children to detect and prevent problematic uses with electronic devices. The law speaks of a curricular itinerary that accompanies boys and girls to acquire digital competencies and articulates a vital element, which is the National Strategy for Safe Digital Environments, which is the set of formative pedagogical tools, acquisition of competencies, notions of rights and freedoms in the digital environment for the entire population of the country. A strategy that accompanies us as a society.

It is a key law because it orders the space, but it must also be recognized that, to change the use of the digital environment, we need a profound and pedagogical change in society, and for that there is the National Strategy.

Q: One of the most relevant measures is, as we said, parental control. There is some consensus on its necessity to access social networks and certain platforms, but there is a debate and a sectoral struggle. Who will assume it? Providers or manufacturers?

R: It will be the industry that takes charge of ensuring that, in devices, in software, an intuitive and simple parental control is included by default; so that when a mobile phone is activated, when it is going to be used by a minor, it can be configured automatically. It is the most guaranteeing and the industry has to assume it.

There are more elements, such as the labeling of the box. Just as a pack of tobacco informs that smoking harms, an electronic device will have to have a label that collects the risks of certain use. In the instructions, they will have to include recommendations and limitations, that is, recommended hours, age ranges in which the use of the device is not recommended… We have asked for the instruction manual to be in accessible and understandable language, because what we intend is for even a boy or girl to be able to understand it.

"The industry has to ensure that devices have parental control by default"

We do a kind of triple check to protect childhood. There is the age verification tool that will be very guaranteeing because it maintains privacy and data. Tools of this type are being tested in several European countries. Spain has its own public one, and it is being successful in the monitoring that is being done.

Another important point is the specific recognition of the right of childhood to have a safe digital environment, with full rights and freedoms. It is fundamental, because from there everything else derives.

Q: You have mentioned labeling. There is a struggle with the sector, and even among parliamentary groups, on whether the manufacturer should do it or whether to incorporate generic labeling prepared by the Government.

R: We can do a subsequent development. This has to be seen and digest the amendments.

Q: Sánchez announced sanctions on platforms that do not remove hate content. Is this enough or just a first step?

R: It's a good step. We must explore the legal limits we have as a country and in our legislation, with the opportune modifications, of course. At least it provides a defense instrument and it's important, but we go further.  Besides sanctioning, there is a structural problem: the digital space is a public space that is absolutely privatized. We are in the hands of three technological strongmen who dictate the rules of the game, and these are rules that harm our children. They are limiting our rights and freedoms and only serve for them to accumulate more and more profits.

There is no reason for the digital environment to be a privatized space, so we propose public squares in the digital environment, that is, why can't there be public social networks? That do not have toxic algorithms that make us addicted and dependent, unhappy, that make us permanently hate the people next to us and that, furthermore, do not segment and limit information, breaking the right to access truthful information. All this requires ordering the digital environment and setting some limits within what each sovereign State can do. The reflection has to be elevated and, I believe, mechanisms will have to be put in place that will have to be of a supranational nature.

"Why can't there be social networks of a public nature? Without toxic algorithms"

Q: Speaking, precisely, of certain practices. You yourself suggested to the Prosecutor's Office that it investigate whether Grok was committing crimes for the dissemination of child pornography.

R: That's right. We are scandalized. Thousands of images from a generative Artificial Intelligence of child pornography. And of course, zero consequences for the owner of that social network, apparently, with infinite violations of rights. This in the physical world would seem to all of us an outrage and an atrocity. Everyone would see that the normal and sensible thing to do is to close the business of whoever was profiting from child pornography. The resistance of the right and the far-right to setting limits on certain spaces is curious, but well, they are also profiting in some way at an electoral level. This division between physical and virtual space no longer exists.

Q: He speaks of a PP, a Vox and a Junts that could stop the law. Because there is no solid parliamentary majority and this project does not appear on the list of those that Puigdemont's formation plans to facilitate.

R: I trust that this law will go forward. Not with Vox, who has already presented an amendment to the whole and basically they are not going to do anything because they are against the Government. For Vox, deregulation suits them very well to spread hoaxes and build parallel realities, but to misinform is not anyone's right.

With the rest of the parties, I hope it comes out. There have been interesting contributions from right-wing groups and I have to say it, because it is positive. I am glad there has been a substantial contribution and it would be good news. There are aspects that the law addresses that are of broad consensus and I trust that we will be capable because it worries us a lot.

"The digital environment must be regulated, it is the law of the jungle for three digital strongmen to make money with our rights"

Q: It is one of the major laws in processing, without a doubt, but the doubt assails me if you fear that, both this and others that we will now address, come to nothing due to lack of majorities or because there isn't time in the legislature.

R: In a good part of the laws that we have planned because they are already in Congress or about to enter the Council of Ministers, I must say that I have some optimism that they can move forward. We are on schedule. The Bill for the protection of minors in digital environments is very advanced and I believe there is will. It will be a turning point. I have optimism. Perhaps reality will take me elsewhere, but I am going to work with determination.

Q: Of course, there are many other laws that remain blocked. Cinema Law, Mónica García's health laws…

R: In our case, we have several projects, but let's say that we have selected the big topics very well to be efficient in the objective we want to achieve. Because it's true, the correlation of parliamentary forces is what it is and the deadlines are extended.

Q: Work is being done on a vicarious violence law. What deadlines do you have? Have your demands been included?

R: It is finishing being negotiated, therefore, I will be discreet. It is quite advanced and I trust that in a very short period it will move forward. We are also working, and it will soon go to the Council of Ministers, on the expansion of the Organic Law for the Comprehensive Protection of Children and Adolescents against Violence [commonly known as LOPIVI]. It is relatively recent and a pioneering law, but after a few years of evaluation, we see that some aspects need to be expanded and reinforced.

What we have done is a review and expansion of elements that have to do with gender violence against children, which is why some points will be resolved through the LOPIVI.

"Soon will go to the Council of Ministers the expansion of the LOPIVI"

Q: Is this where you intend to introduce the topic of visitation rights, parental authority, listening to minors…

R: Yes. Here we are working on the visitation regime, because we are governed by a clear orientation that an abuser cannot be a good father and that there are dramatic processes in which boys and girls are living very extreme situations. We see that sometimes they are handed over to the abuser or the perpetrator, this cannot be, it is unacceptable. Therefore, what we need is an instrument that provides many guarantees, hence the reform of the LOPIVI.

We are also going to include their own legal assistance for children, that is, that they have the right to their own defense, independently of the parents. Also the right to be heard, that is, that they will have to listen to children not only from 12 years of age.

Q: There is an issue that does not originate from your Ministry, but from Health, but it involves young people: the law on alcohol in minors. It is blocked in Congress.

R: It is a very interesting law. It values childhood and youth policies as state policies. Having a Ministry like this has allowed us to generate a work dynamic in which colleagues from other ministries, and sectorally too, are working on issues related to minors. This law on alcohol for minors is interesting, also that the one on energy drinks is launched, the issue of school canteens…

There is a whole panel of measures that have to do with children's rights, which is a transversal issue of the Government. It is one of these laws that are stalled and I trust that it will be unblocked because we are all in agreement from a health point of view on the impact it has.

I take the opportunity to remind that we have data that point to the fact that, currently, the consumption of alcohol and drugs among youth has decreased.

Q: Changing the subject a bit, child poverty, another of the great subjects of the legislature and, of course, a priority for this Ministry. What is being worked on?
A:  For us, it is one of the priorities and we started working from minute one on a State Pact to eradicate child poverty. The opinion of the subcommittee in Congress should be ready shortly, we are in the drafting phase.

There are two substantial elements to address child poverty. One is housing, because it is the main critical vector for families with sons and daughters in their care, also for young people, who cannot emancipate themselves. It is the great problem of our country. We are betting on much bolder policies that protect tenants, for public housing, rent caps, that the Housing Law is complied with, legislative reforms to protect the extension of rents, and tourist and seasonal apartments must be regulated, which are a parasitic element of the housing stock.

The other central issue to reduce child poverty is the universal child-rearing benefit, which we intend to include in the State Pact to eradicate child poverty. We propose 200 euros per son and daughter in their charge from zero to 18 years old. We estimate that it would allow to lift 700,000 boys and girls out of poverty before 2030. It is already applied in 17 countries, which is why there are virtuous experiences.

It must be remembered that child poverty costs this country 5.1% of GDP, we are talking about a lot of money and that the investment of the universal child-rearing benefit would be much less than that percentage, besides being profoundly beneficial in terms of social care investment. The State as an entity that cares for its citizens, male and female.

Q: A few days ago, on March 18, marked one year since the Royal Decree on solidarity reception, and I link this to the recent regularization of migrants. What assessment do you make?

R: Very positive. Against the dynamic of a world that is increasingly hostile to a phenomenon that is part of humanity, which is that human beings migrate, this country wants to welcome, and to welcome gift rights.

It is a gesture of humanity, but deeply political, loaded with intention and accompanied by intentions. It is not simply a declaration. It has allowed the transfer of almost a thousand boys and girls. Furthermore, we have put on the table that when it comes to fulfilling rights, there cannot be territorial asymmetries. We have to function as a country, which requires having political stature. The migratory contingency does not only affect the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla. And contrary to what the ultras, especially from Vox, had been warning, there have been no problems, there are many successful cases.

Q: Finally, I know it falls outside your department, but you have been very committed to the defense of the Palestinian people; and we are now facing a war in Iran. What is your opinion on Spain's stance and what way out do you see?

R: Spain right now is the country that is leading the ‘No to war’ and applying some common sense. It's good news. I am worried, like any human being who has a minimum of sensitivity and sees what is happening in the Middle East. The war has become regionalized and we are seeing a savage offensive from the United States and Israel.

It is very worrying because we know what an extension in time of a conflict of these characteristics entails and, above all, the impunity that some countries have to perpetrate true atrocities. This is a barbarity. We have all seen what has happened and continues to happen in Gaza and the West Bank.

Spain has positioned itself and has allowed other European leaders, initially more lukewarm, to have ended up positioning themselves against, saying that they are not going to enter into war. One must be more demanding and move away from double standards. If sanctions, rupture of commercial agreements, and suspension of arms sales with certain countries are proposed, it must also be done with those who break the rules of the game.