Spain says social media platforms such as Musk's X must be neutral, not interfere

Madrid: Social media platforms should be neutral and not interfere in other nations' political affairs, the Spanish government's spokesperson said on Tuesday, after X's CEO Elon Musk commented on statistics about foreigners jailed for rape in Spain.

Pilar Alegria was answering a question about the high-profile spat between the billionaire owner of X and European leaders such as Britain's Keir Starmer and France's Emmanuel Macron.

"We believe that these platforms must always act with absolute neutrality and above all, without interfering," she told a news conference.

Musk, who is set to serve Donald Trump's new administration as an outside adviser, waded into Spanish affairs on Sunday by commenting "Wow" while reposting an X post from the account Visegrad24 featuring a screenshot of an article on rape convictions in Spain's northeastern region of Catalonia.

The article, originally published by La Razon newspaper on September 27 of last year, carried the headline "91 per cent of those convicted for rape in Catalonia are foreigners" and the subheading "Immigrants make up 17 per cent of the region's total population".

A spokesperson for the Catalan region Justice Department confirmed to Reuters the data cited by the local media, adding that it was published at the beginning of last summer.

Data from Catalan authorities highlighted by La Razon showed that 22 out of the 24 people convicted or on remand on rape charges in Catalonia were non-Spanish citizens.

"We can't allow democracy to fall into the hands of tech billionaires allied with the far right," Catalonia's Socialist regional leader, Salvador Illa, told an event in Barcelona later on Tuesday.

"We won't allow anyone to use Catalonia's name to spread hate speech," Illa added, without explicitly naming Musk.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose liberal stance on immigration is harshly criticised by far-right party Vox, has rejected any links between rates of immigration and crime and has said that "foreigners are neither better nor worse than Spaniards" in terms of criminality.

Spanish crime rates have either remained stable or diminished every year since 2011. A Spanish Interior Ministry report published in September concluded that "the immigration phenomenon is not having a negative or significant impact on crime rates".