Spain Orders Meta to Pay €479m in Data Misuse Case

In a major ruling that shakes up Europe’s digital advertising landscape, a Spanish commercial court has ordered Meta to pay €479 million to dozens of Spanish digital media outlets. The decision follows findings that Meta gained an unfair edge in Spain’s online ad market by using personal data from Facebook and Instagram users without proper compliance with EU data protection rules.

The compensation will be distributed among 87 digital press publishers and news agencies, marking one of the largest collective payouts ever demanded from the tech giant in Spain. According to the court, Meta’s behavioural advertising practices—built on the analysis of user habits, interests, and online activity—gave the company a “significant competitive advantage” over local publishers who must operate under stricter regulations and limited data access.

The court noted that Meta’s data handling practices violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), allowing the company to strengthen its dominance in Spain’s advertising market. This, it said, created an uneven playing field where compliant publishers struggled to compete.

Meta has not yet issued a response to the ruling, and requests for comment remain unanswered as of Thursday.

The decision comes at a tense moment for the company in Spain. Just a day earlier, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that a lower house committee would begin examining Meta’s potential privacy violations affecting millions of Facebook and Instagram users in the country. The investigation is expected to look deeper into how the company collects, processes, and monetises user data.

With the court’s order and a parliamentary review now in motion, Spain’s pressure on Big Tech appears to be entering a new, assertive phase.