The Spanish Section of the Association of European Journalists, known in Spanish as the Asociación de Periodistas Europeos, or APE, belongs to an organization founded in Brussels in 1963 to bring together journalists committed to European integration on democratic foundations. The Spanish section was constituted in 1981 and declared an association of public utility in 1985. Based in Madrid, it organizes seminars, luncheon colloquia with senior officials and journalism awards. According to its website, its corporate sponsors include BBVA, Telefónica, Indra and NATO. Diego Carcedo, a former director of Spanish National Radio, presided over the section until his death in April 2026. In October 2026, the APE reported that representatives of the official All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新聞工作者協會), or ACJA, a Chinese Communist Party-led professional association that serves a key role in implementing press control policies, had visited its premises months earlier. It also said it had attended the association’s 2026 Belt and Road forum in Nanjing as an invited guest. Chinese coverage of an ACJA roundtable in Madrid in May 2026 described a memorandum signed with a “Spanish branch” of a European journalists’ body, which may refer to the APE.