Andrés Barragán, Spain’s Secretary General for Consumer Affairs and Gaming, presented the proposals after attending an FEJAR-organized responsible gambling event. He positioned online gambling as a public health problem. The ministry’s three initiatives, as described in his public comments, are centered on the weak spots in the current system:
- Setting up effective betting limits across all operators to ensure that gamblers cannot evade limits by simply changing brands;
- Introducing new warnings in advertisements with information about the operators’ earnings, moving the focus from the individual responsibility only;
- Improving the system for identifying at-risk gamblers, designed by public health experts to replace the existing monitoring techniques.
Why the Public-Health Framing Matters
Barragán’s language is important because it indicates where enforcement and compliance expectations are likely to shift next. According to Barragán, the problem is not simply one of user behavior, but also of product design and marketing, particularly when a small share of players accounts for a large share of losses.
This kind of framing usually requires a set of rules that are more difficult to “design around”. These can be shared-limit infrastructure, more restricted marketing, and risk scoring based on standards rather than operator models.
Youth Survey Adds Pressure on 2026 Policy Agenda
The timing also coincides with fresh national data from the Spanish drug and addiction monitoring system. Fieldwork for ESTUDES 2025 covered 35,256 students aged 14-18 (Feb-Jun 2025). The Health Ministry reports that youth gambling has risen compared to previous waves.
The key figures mentioned in the public report include 13% online gambling and 20.9% offline gambling in 2025, with greater prevalence in boys. The same Health Ministry note reports 4,916 admissions for treatment of behavioral addictions in 2023, primarily due to gambling.
What to Watch Next
More standardized, government-driven measures for protection, such as better on-site notices and an early detection strategy, have already been indicated by Spain in 2025. Then comes the implementation phase:
- Whether the limits on operators are based on shared infrastructure, and what is shared;
- How profit-driven ad warnings are to be defined, displayed, and enforced;
- Whether the new public health paradigm will replace existing tools or operate side by side.
Operators should watch for draft rules that can put these concepts into enforceable technical standards.
