Sinosphere

According to Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE), more than 238,000 Chinese nationals resided in Spain as of January 2025, most living in the northeastern autonomous community of Catalonia, along the Mediterranean coast, and in the capital city of Madrid. According to the official tourism website of Madrid, the city’s southern district of Usera is “the neighborhood with the largest concentration of the Chinese community in Spain.” The district is home to an estimated one-quarter of the city’s Chinese residents, and is also the site each year of one of Europe’s largest celebrations for the Lunar New Year. In Catalonia’s capital of Barcelona, there is a similar concentration of Chinese residents in the municipality of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, according to an academic study covering the 2008-2018 period. 

According to an account posted to the European public affairs publication The New Federalist, the first Chinese migrants from Qingtian arrived in Spain during World War I, but the numerically larger wave did not begin until the 1970s, when Spain established diplomatic relations with Beijing. Most of the Chinese who arrived in Spain were younger immigrants from rural Zhejiang province. They were attracted by the prospect of well-paid work and a higher quality of life in Europe — and most settled where relatives or fellow villagers were already established. “My mother told me how hard the journey was,” recalled one daughter of a Qingtian family that settled in Barcelona, quoted in the account in The New Federalist, “and then they were in a strange new country.” Spain was “not a dream destination before the 1990s,” according to the account, and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975) had left the country with conditions that were, as The New Federalist put it, “everything but ideal.” 

The Chinese population in Spain surged in the 1990s, growing from around 5,000 at the start of the decade to an estimated 30,000 by its close. The influx was helped to some extent by immigration amnesties introduced by the Spanish government in first 1981, and then in 2001, which allowed undocumented residents to obtain legal status. By 2003, a report from Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation would note that the Chinese migrant community in Spain, “[originally] a small and dispersed population,” had grown significantly, becoming the fourth-largest in the country among migrant groups from non-EU countries. By April 2016, 93,810 Chinese nationals had been registered in Spain’s social security system. Of these, more than half were listed as self-employed. By the end of 2023, 243,184 Chinese nationals held valid residence permits. 

A number of Chinese-language media outlets serve this sizable community. They include the Spanish-language newspaper El Mandarín, or “The Mandarin,” which operates the Chinese-language website Ouhua.info (歐華網), as well as social media accounts on Weibo and WeChat. Another outlet is the Chinese weekly La Voz China (歐洲僑聲報), published by Eurasia Media Group, which also runs a website in Chinese and Spanish. In the broadcasting sector, China FM (華夏之聲) is Spain’s primary Mandarin-language radio station, broadcasting 24 hours on the FM band in the Madrid region and online worldwide.

Climate & Challenges

Spain’s transition from Francisco Franco’s four-decade dictatorship, which ended with his death in 1975, to a constitutional democracy produced a significantly freer press than had existed under the rigid censorship of the Franco regime. In the first several years after the regime’s end, new print media and private radio stations cropped up in place of the old regime outlets, with private television channels following by 1989. The country has made notable progress in many areas, and acceded to the European Union in 1986, bringing its legal and institutional frameworks into closer alignment with European standards. But Franco’s rule left “deep and lasting scars on Spanish society,” as one analyst wrote in 2025, marking the 50th anniversary of the dictatorship’s end.

Compared with other European countries, journalism scholars Ramón Salaverría and Beatriz Gómez Baceiredo have noted, Spain remains “underdeveloped in terms of media institutions and responsibility systems,” with control of media activity resting primarily with the state and the courts. In the 2025 RSF World Press Freedom Index, Spain ranked 23rd out of 180 countries, up from 30th in 2024. Though this was a meaningful improvement, persistent concerns remain about restrictive legislation,legal harassment of journalists (including by local officials), and declining public trust in media — at a decade-low 31 percent according to a Reuters Institute survey in 2025. The same study found that social media platforms, particularly TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, have become dominant news sources for younger Spaniards.

A 2025 report from the Center for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom found that “Spain’s media landscape shows mixed progress compared to 2023.” The report, which gave Spain an overall medium-high risk score of 53 percent, flagged the use — or perhaps abuse — of criminal defamation prosecutions against journalists, the absence of anti-SLAPP legislation, abarrage of online threats against journalists, and high levels of audience concentration in television, radio, and newspapers that leave editorial diversity in the hands of a small segment of owners — all areas it said had worsened since 2023.

Spain’s constitution, adopted in 1978 after the transition to democracy, guarantees freedom of expression and the press under Article 20, protecting the right to “freely express and spread thoughts, ideas and opinions” and to “freely communicate or receive truthful information by any means of dissemination whatsoever.” But these protections are subject to limitations imposed by other legislation, raising sustained concerns among press freedom organizations.

The most controversial of these restrictions is the Organic Law 4/2015 on Citizen Security (Ley Orgánica de Protección de la Seguridad Ciudadana), commonly known among its critics as the “Gag Law”, or Ley Mordaza. Passed by the conservative Popular Party despite widespread opposition, the law grants extensive powers to law enforcement and imposes high fines for offenses including “resisting or disrespecting” authorities (Article 36.6) and the unauthorized dissemination of images of police officers during operations (Article 36.23). Over its first decade, the law reportedly resulted in nearly 300,000 sanctions.

One case that drew international attention involved El País photojournalist Albert García, who was violently arrested on October 18, 2019, while photographing another arrest in Barcelona. According to the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Protection of Journalism, officers shouted “The camera!” before throwing García to the ground and handcuffing him — despite his press armband — and later told gathered journalists: “We are policemen and we can do what we want. We are the law.” García faced a prison sentence before being ultimately acquitted in November 2021. In August 2024, a coalition of press freedom groups including the International Press Institute and Article 19 called for full repeal of the law, arguing its overly broad provisions interfere with journalists’ ability to cover events in the public interest.

Beyond the Gag Law, journalists in Spain face additional legal pressures. Spain’s Criminal Code (Organic Act 10/1995) criminalizes both slander — defined under Article 205 as accusing someone of a crime “knowing it is false or recklessly disregarding the truth” — and defamation, defined under Article 208 as any expression that “harms the dignity of another person, detracting from his reputation.” Serious defamation propagated publicly carries fines, while slander can result in up to two years imprisonment. The code also imposes stiffer penalties — up to two years imprisonment — for defaming the Spanish royal family under Article 490. Spain also lacks dedicated anti-SLAPP legislation, leaving journalists vulnerable to strategic lawsuits designed to silence reporting through the threat of costly litigation.

Domestic Chinese Media 

Spain’s Chinese-language media landscape dates back to July 1994, when more than fifty overseas Chinese representatives gathered in Madrid to launch the Voice of the Spanish Chinese (西華之聲), the first Chinese-language newspaper founded by mainland Chinese emigrants in Spain. The outlet ran for five years before ceasing publication in 1999.

Today, the Ouhua Media Group (歐華傳媒), headquartered in Madrid, publishes Ouhua News (歐華報), which the group describes as “the only Chinese-language newspaper with nationwide distribution in Spain” (西班牙華文媒體中唯一發行面覆蓋西班牙全國的報紙). Founded in December 2002, the group also publishes the Spanish-language outlet El Mandarín, launched in 2005, and maintains correspondent offices in Barcelona and Valencia. Ouhua lists both Xinhua News Agency and China News Service (中國新聞社) as overseas cooperation partners. China News Service, which one research report has called “the CCP’s main propaganda organ targeting overseas Chinese,” has been overseen by the CCP’s United Front Work Department since a 2018 government restructuring. In 2016, Ouhua also signed a cooperation agreement with EFE, Spain’s national news agency. The group’s own stated editorial mission includes “patriotism” and “opposing independence, promoting reunification” (愛國愛鄉、反獨促統).

A second outlet is La Voz China (僑聲報), a Chinese-language weekly founded in March 2003 and headquartered in Barcelona. Published by the Spain Eurasia Media Group (西班牙歐亞傳媒集團), the group also operates the Spanish Chinese Website (西班牙中文網) and maintains accounts on WeChat, Weibo, and Facebook. The group’s president, Dai Huadong (戴華東), has served since 2016 as Vice Chairman of the World Chinese Media Cooperation Alliance — a platform managed through China News Service that coordinates overseas Chinese-language media outlets to align with party messaging. He is also a member of the Standing Committee of the Zhejiang Provincial Youth Federation (浙江青委常委), according to the same source. In 2012, the newspaper collaborated with People’s Daily Online to launch an online portal for an overseas edition.

Other media include Diario de Chinos (西班牙華人網),founded in 2010 and based in Zaragoza, which focuses on bilateral exchange news and local overseas Chinese affairs. China FM (華夏之聲),launched in 2017 and directed by Dawei Ding (丁大偉), a former Spanish correspondent for the People’s Daily, is the only radio station in Europe broadcasting exclusively in Mandarin around the clock. Operating from Madrid, it serves the diaspora community with news, entertainment, and cultural programming. The station’s media company acquired several Italian FM stations in 2016, expanding its Mandarin broadcasting to Rome, Milan, Florence, Genoa, and Turin. According to its own Spanish-language materials, the station operates “with the support of the Consulate General of the Embassy of the PRC in Spain” and in collaboration with People’s Daily, China Central Television, and China Radio International — the latter part of the China Media Group, which operates directly under the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department.

Lines of PRC Impact & Engagement

Spain and China established diplomatic relations in 1973, and the relationship has deepened over the past two decades through what both governments have described since 2005 as a “comprehensive strategic partnership” (全面戰略夥伴關係). While Madrid has not formally signed a Belt and Road memorandum of understanding, having declined to do so during Xi Jinping’s 2018 state visit, economic ties have continued to deepen — particularly through Chinese investment in Spain’s renewable energy sector, where China has become a key partner in Spain’s decarbonization plans. Against this backdrop of expanding bilateral ties, the PRC has cultivated documented channels of engagement with and through Spain’s media ecosystem, both through content-sharing arrangements with major news outlets and through direct diplomatic engagement with journalists and media organizations.

Soft Ties and Sympathies

High-level diplomatic exchanges have provided a visible marker of the relationship’s trajectory. In April 2025, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez met with Xi Jinping in Beijing — his fourth trip to China in four years — a visit that Xinhua framed around “the 20th anniversary of the establishment of a comprehensive strategic partnership.” Seven months later, King Felipe VI made a state visit to Beijing, the first by a Spanish monarch in 18 years. Xi’s language for the occasion was carefully calibrated: a partnership with “greater strategic determination, dynamism and global influence” — words that place Spain within China’s broader narrative of building relationships beyond the US-led order. The visit produced, according to Xinhua, ten cooperation documents spanning trade, technology, and education.

The Xinhua readout also quoted King Felipe VI as saying Spain “supports China in safeguarding its territorial integrity” — language that goes beyond the standard European formulation of merely acknowledging, rather than endorsing, China’s position on Taiwan. When Prime Minister Sánchez met Xi Jinping in Beijing in April 2025, China’s official readout attributed to Sánchez the statement that “Spain firmly adheres to the principle of one China” — Beijing’s own formulation, which asserts that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, going further than the standard Western “one China policy,” which recognizes the PRC as the legitimate government without explicitly endorsing its territorial claims over Taiwan. Spain’s government disputed this characterization, pointing to its official position that stops short of that formulation.

Signaling of close ties is also evident in Spain’s approach to Confucius Institutes. While a number of European countries have shut them down, Spain has not followed suit. As of 2023, eight were operating across the country, with a ninth agreed at the University of Sevilla, and the University of Salamanca formally inaugurating its own institute in May 2025.

Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has been among the most vocal Spanish supporters of PRC policies. During a March 2020 television interview, he praised China’s pandemic response, saying China “is producing the decisive medical material to save lives” and highlighting what he called its “efficacy” in controlling the outbreak and “solidarity” with Spain. A year later, he authored an op-ed in China Daily praising the PRC government. “Before the global crisis brought on by the pandemic, China was already the key power in search of an international order that would overcome the fragile governance of globalization,” he wrote.

Hard Approaches

In recent years, the PRC has worked to build closer ties with Spanish media primarily through content-sharing agreements between Chinese state media organizations and major Spanish news outlets. Spain’s national, publicly funded news agency EFE and Europa Press, the country’s largest private agency, have both signed formal cooperation agreements with Xinhua News Agency (新華社) — EFE most recently when Xinhua’s president met with its counterpart in Madrid — giving Chinese government-produced content access to Spain’s mainstream media ecosystem through trusted domestic intermediaries.

The second dimension is direct state engagement with media, in which PRC officials and state media entities organize events in Spain that bring together Chinese diplomats, CCP-affiliated figures, Spanish journalists, and media-adjacent organizations. The China Media Group (中央廣播電視總台) has been active in this space. Organizations like Cátedra China, which maintains close ties to both the Chinese embassy and CCP-linked bodies such as the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (中國人民對外友好協會), serve as intermediaries that facilitate diplomatic access to Spanish media, academic, and institutional circles.

For examples of the various forms of cooperation and engagement between China and Spanish media and media-related organizations, see our Activity Reports for Spain.