Newtral

Report September 2026

Submitted

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Elections 2025
[Note: Signatories are requested to provide information relevant to their particular response to the threats and challenges they observed on their service(s). They ensure that the information below provides an accurate and complete report of their relevant actions. As operational responses to crisis/election situations can vary from service to service, an absence of information should not be considered a priori a shortfall in the way a particular service has responded. Impact metrics are accurate to the best of signatories’ abilities to measure them].
Threats observed or anticipated
Three regional elections in Spain (Aragón, Castilla y León and Andalucía, February–May 2026): 

Across the three Spanish regional elections held between February and May 2026 — Aragón (8 February), Castilla y León (15 March) and Andalucía (17 May) — Newtral identified a consistent pattern of election-related disinformation threats, alongside region-specific narratives tied to local candidates and issues.


Recurring threats identified across all three elections included:

  • Voting-procedure disinformation: recurring false claims about what constitutes a null vote (e.g., writing on ballots, using envelopes from other elections, submitting two ballots from different parties), designed to confuse voters or discourage participation.
  • Postal and electoral fraud narratives: content questioning the integrity of postal voting and vote-counting systems, including recurring false claims that private companies contracted for data transmission (e.g., Indra) are involved in counting votes, and misleading framing of statistical fluctuations in postal-vote figures as evidence of manipulation.
  • AI-generated and deepfake content: growing use of AI to fabricate statements or images attributed to candidates, flagged as an emerging risk requiring dedicated detection guidance for the public.
  • Fabricated interference in the campaign or in voting itself: including staged or decontextualized footage falsely presented as evidence of coercion at polling stations or campaign sabotage (e.g., a viral video from a 2023 election falsely recirculated as showing coercion during the 2026 Andalucía campaign).
  • In Andalucía specifically, Newtral verified additional false narratives targeting individual candidates and public figures, including a fabricated claim that a musician's public endorsement of a candidate triggered mass concert-ticket refunds, and disinformation around the removal of campaign posters. In Aragón, Newtral also addressed disinformation around postal-vote figures and unfounded claims of irregularities such as "secret voting booth" failures.
  • Beyond viral disinformation, Newtral anticipated and addressed a parallel risk: misleading or false statements made directly by candidates during televised debates (RTVE, Canal Sur, regional broadcasters) and campaign events, which required systematic, real-time political fact-checking rather than reactive debunking of user-generated content.

Mitigations in place

Between February and May 2026, Spain held three separate regional elections: the Cortes of Aragón (8 February 2026), the Cortes of Castilla y León (15 March 2026) and the Parliament of Andalucía (17 May 2026). Newtral deployed a consistent methodology across all three electoral processes, adapted to the specific dynamics and timelines of each campaign, with the following actions carried out:

  • Pre-election anti-disinformation guides: ahead of each vote, Newtral published dedicated guides to help citizens identify and avoid falling for common types of election-related disinformation, tailored to the specific candidates, parties and local issues at stake in each region (e.g., the guide published ahead of the Aragón election and the guide published ahead of the Andalucía election).
  • Early warning on potential campaign interference: Newtral flagged and reported on possible risks of interference or manipulation targeting the electoral campaigns, drawing attention to patterns observed in previous elections and emerging narratives specific to each region.
  • Real-time monitoring during election day: Newtral tracked and verified information circulating during the electoral day itself in each of the three regions, responding promptly to claims and content requiring fact-checking as results were counted and reported.
  • Practical training through the "Verificatón" hackathon (Andalucía): Newtral organised a fact-checking hackathon focused on the candidates' televised debate ahead of the Andalucía election, bringing together students from two Spanish universities to verify political discourse in a hands-on exercise alongside Newtral's own newsroom journalists. This initiative was carried out within the framework of IberCHECK, the cross-media fact-checking alliance led by Newtral with support from the European Commission, and reflects Newtral's broader commitment to building fact-checking capacity and training the next generation of verifiers to scrutinise political speech.