Spain’s Interior Ministry has confirmed that its communications office compiled a secret dossier classifying dozens of working journalists by their political views and by their attitude towards the Government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
The document was revealed on September 8, 2026 by the Madrid news site El Confidencial, which obtained a copy. It runs to dozens of pages and carries the ministry letterhead.
Each entry pairs a photograph with a professional profile and a note on the journalist’s politics. The annotations describe reporters variously as supportive of the Government, close to the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), conservative, right-wing or linked to disinformation.
Completed in 2024 and organised alphabetically by surname, the file covers newspaper editors, well-known columnists and less prominent reporters. It also lists officers of the Madrid Press Association (APM), the Federation of Associations of Spanish Journalists (FAPE) and the Association of Parliamentary Journalists (APP).
An official spokeswoman confirmed the document was authentic but distanced interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska from it, saying he neither ordered the work nor ever saw it.
The ministry rejected the term blacklist. It said the file was for internal consumption within the communications office, to establish which journalists appeared in the media and which subjects they covered.
Sources familiar with the drafting said the first instruction came at a meeting in late 2023 attended by some 15 communications staff, among them police officers assigned to the press team. A second meeting added the requirement for photographs and an order that the document should not circulate.
Part of the team refused to take part, warning that ranking journalists by ideology was unconstitutional. The ministry said staff who were uncomfortable with the task were free to decline it.
The communications office holds the rank of a sub-directorate general and is responsible for institutional advertising relations with the media. The ministry said the list was never drawn up to shape those decisions.
The European Union’s European Media Freedom Act, which has applied since August 2025, obliges member states to shield journalists from state interference and to allocate public advertising on transparent, non-discriminatory criteria.
The dossier was completed during a difficult year for the Government, which saw the passage of the amnesty law for Catalan separatist leaders and the opening of the corruption investigations that have since reached Sánchez’s inner circle.
Almost all the journalists named remain in work today.
