The Spanish Government has taken a further step in its response to Maldita.es’ investigation into the presence of child sexual abuse material on TikTok. The Ministry of Youth and Children has formally requested the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) to provisionally suspend the activity of the platform in Spain, through an exceptional procedure provided for in European data protection regulations.

The request was announced on Tuesday, November 10, by Minister Sira Rego, after holding meetings with representatives of the Maldita.es Foundation and TikTok. The person in charge of Youth and Children considers that the documented deficiencies in the detection and moderation mechanisms justify urgent intervention to protect minors.

“If it had been up to me, TikTok would have been suspended in Spain since yesterday”said Rego, who also questioned the effectiveness of the company’s security tools: “We are seeing that all the protection measures that these platforms claim to have do not work and that they reward the algorithm more than security.”

The request does not mean that TikTok will automatically be suspended. The decision corresponds to the AEPD, an independent authority, which must examine whether the legal circumstances exist to adopt a provisional measure of this nature.

An investigation that has documented millions of views of illegal material

The Ministry’s actions respond to the results of “TikTok, the home of the pedophile”an investigation by Maldita.es developed over 35 days, between September 11 and October 15, 2026, the results of which are being published in five daily installments from November 9 to 13.
Journalists have documented the presence of explicit child sexual abuse material, communities of users that search for and exchange this content, and recommendation systems that facilitate its location. Among the main findings are:

• More than 1,180 publications with explicit material of child sexual abuse, which accumulated around 48 million views
• 7,725 profiles that participated in 12,068 comments in Spanish requesting, offering, exchanging or bragging about possessing this material
• Live broadcasts starring minors, some from schools, in which adults made sexual requests and, sometimes, offered virtual rewards.
• More than 1,500 accounts linked to the marketing of child sexual abuse material using recognizable codes, some of which redirected to services such as Telegram or Zangi
• Deficiencies in moderation mechanisms: of a sample of 50 explicit videos reported to TikTok, the platform initially removed five and blocked another 13 in Spain alone

The investigation has also identified a community of approximately 2,000 profiles that glorify a man convicted of raping a baby, and has documented the live broadcast of one of his recordings of abuse.

The results have placed the operation of TikTok under political and institutional scrutiny, especially due to the apparent distance between the child protection regulations that it claims to apply and the content that researchers have managed to locate.

The Ministry demands that the contents be removed

During its meeting with those responsible for TikTok, the Ministry of Youth and Children presented a series of demands aimed at verifying what measures the company is taking to stop the circulation of child sexual abuse material.
Specifically, it demanded the removal of the identified content, collaboration with the Prosecutor’s Office and the presentation of a verifiable balance of the actions carried out. He also requested explanations about one of the most relevant results of the investigation: why TikTok initially removed only five of the 50 videos that Maldita.es had reported through the platform’s official procedures.

The Sira Rego department also requested a plan to correct the deficiencies detected and proposed to the company the possibility of voluntarily suspending its activity in Spain while measures were taken.
As the Minister explained, TikTok expressed its willingness to maintain the dialogue, but did not make specific commitments during the meeting. Rego described the company’s attitude as a collaboration “half”.

The company, for its part, has publicly defended its security mechanisms and has demanded that Maldita.es share the complete results of the investigation to facilitate the identification and removal of the content. The foundation maintains that it has used official reporting channels and has made the evidence collected available to the Computer Crime Prosecutor’s Office.

The AEPD may adopt exceptional measures for a maximum of three months
The Ministry’s request is based on article 66.1 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which contemplates the possibility for a national data protection authority to adopt immediate provisional measures when there is an urgent need to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals.

This is an exceptional procedure that allows action without waiting for the intervention of the data protection authority of the country where the company has its main European establishment. In the case of TikTok, that authority is Irish, because the company has its European headquarters in Dublin.

The standard establishes several conditions:

• The measure must be justified by an emergency situation
• Its effects are limited to the territory of the Member State that adopts it.
• Its maximum duration is three months
• The intervening authority must communicate the decision to the European Data Protection Committee and the European Commission.

The GDPR does not expressly establish the closure of a social network as a precautionary measure. However, it allows temporary restrictions to be imposed on the processing of personal data that, depending on their scope, could prevent the provision of the service in practice. Therefore, the suspension requested by the Ministry does not constitute a decision already taken nor a power that the Government can exercise unilaterally. It is up to the AEPD to assess the legal basis, urgency and proportionality of any intervention.

This route is different from the mechanisms provided for in the European Union Digital Services Regulation (DSA), which also establishes obligations for large platforms in terms of moderation of illicit content and reduction of risks for minors.

The Government does not rule out interrupting the service

The request to the AEPD constitutes the second institutional movement of the Ministry of Youth and Children in just two days.
On Monday, November 9, Sira Rego’s department had already transferred the results of the investigation to the State Attorney General’s Office, requesting that it examine the facts, possible responsibilities and the necessary measures to guarantee the protection of minors.

The Minister assured that, during her meeting with Maldita.es, she was able to directly see how some of the investigated accounts operated: “They work with total impunity, I have been able to verify it myself with the Maldita.es team.”

The situation has also provoked the intervention of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who described in La Séptima the findings as “scandal” and assured that the Executive would act forcefully and proportionally. The President did not rule out the possibility of temporarily suspending TikTok in Spain if necessary.

For his part, the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has also expressed his concern after learning first-hand about the investigation, especially the episodes of sexual harassment of minors during live broadcasts. In a publication on X, he called for strengthening his protection on the internet and stated: “What is crime on the street will also be crime in the digital world.”

The Ministry’s request now opens a procedure whose resolution depends on the data protection authority. For the moment, TikTok continues to operate in Spain and no effective suspension of its services has been announced.