Law No. 11/2022, of 28 June 2022, General Telecommunications ('the General Telecommunication Law') was published, on 29 June 2022, in the Official Gazette, replacing Law No. 9/2014, of 9 May 2014, General Telecommunications. In particular, Article 66(1)(a) of the General Telecommunication Law provides for the right to the protection of personal data and privacy in relation to unsolicited communications, specifying that the end users of the interpersonal communications services available to the public, based on numbering, will have the following rights:

• not to receive automatic calls without human intervention or fax messages for commercial communication purposes, without having given their prior consent to do so; and
• not to receive unwanted calls for commercial communication purposes, unless there is prior consent of the user to receive this type of commercial communication, or unless the communication can be covered by another legal basis under the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) ('GDPR').

Regarding the sanctioning procedure, Article 114 of the General Telecommunication Law provides that the Spanish data protection authority ('AEPD') will be the competent authority in the case of serious or minor violations of end users' rights, with Article 109 of the General Telecommunication Law specifying that those who commit minor infractions will be fined up to €100,000, while their legal representatives may also be fined up to €5,000 in their personal capacity.

With regards to the protection of personal data more generally, Article 60 of the General Telecommunication Law provides, among other things, that operators that supply public electronic communications networks or that provide electronic communications services available to the public, including public communications networks that support identification and data collection devices, must adopt appropriate technical and organisational security measures to ensure security in the supply of their service or network.

In addition, the General Telecommunication Law has entered into force on the date of its publication in the Official Gazette; however, the right of end users not to receive unwanted calls for commercial communication purposes, referred to in Article 66(1)(b) of the General Telecommunication Law, will come into force within one year from the publication of the General Telecommunication Law in the Official Gazette (i.e. on 23 June 2023), and until then, end users of number-based interpersonal communications services available to the public may continue to exercise the right to object to receiving unwanted calls for commercial communication purposes that are made through systems other than those established in Article 66(1)(a) of the General Telecommunication Law, and to be informed of this right.

You can read the General Telecommunication Law, only available in Spanish, here.