The Spanish Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia (OBERAXE) reported on Wednesday morning an increase in hate speech in sports. This is one of the main conclusions of the quarterly bulletin.
This bulletin also indicates that Muslim and Latin American people are perceived as an economic, social, and security threat. "As we see, we must continue working intensely with the platforms themselves to detect this content early and have it removed," assured Minister Elma Saiz. "Collaboration with them is very important, and we are already reaping good results. In March 2026, the rate of removal of hate speech content by platforms stood at 62%."
A third meeting with TikTok, Google, and Meta
The Spanish Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia has held this Wednesday a third working group meeting with the platforms operating in our country. In the meeting, progress has been made on the existing collaboration regarding moderation and early detection of hate speech on social networks and the results have been examined, both in the volume of reported content and the rate of removal applied by these platforms.
At the meeting were representatives from TikTok, Google (Youtube), Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and La Liga, along with members of the Secretariat of State for Migrations, including Secretary of State Pilar Candela and the director of OBERAXE, Tomás Fernández.
Lamine Yamal and Vinícius Júnior, the biggest victims
The data from hate speech monitoring on social networks for the first quarter of 2026 show that these messages have grown in sports contexts, especially in football (9%). Hate speech linked to sports represents 16% of the total content analyzed.
Football, in the men's category, is recognized as a significant space for the expression of xenophobic and racist narratives on social networks, with people from North Africa being the target group (61%) that concentrated the majority of this hate speech content.
The celebration of the Africa Cup of Nations and its broadcast, as well as the celebrations of different fan bases in Spanish cities, generated an increase in hostile messages linked to the racial or ethnic origin of players and supporters.
Beyond the attacks directed at individual figures - Lamine Yamal and Vinícius Júnior concentrate the largest volume of messages - this content aims to guide a narrative that reflects broader social tensions. Football becomes a space of high media visibility for the activation and amplification of racist and xenophobic narratives.
Regarding the socio-economic sphere, which represented 20% of the total hate speech content, one of the episodes that concentrated a higher volume of messages was the drafting of the Royal Decree for the extraordinary regularization of foreign individuals already residing in Spain. These messages, which portray migrants as an economic, social, and security threat, were directed towards Muslim individuals (24%) and Latin American individuals (11%). Hate content directed towards Latin American individuals has increased by 7 points compared to the previous quarter.
More than 1,100 daily hate messages
The report registers this quarter a total of 105,911 messages of a racist and xenophobic nature, the majority (85%) directed against people from North Africa and Muslims, with a daily average of 1,170 hate messages. The platforms removed 55% of the reported content, 4 percentage points more than in the previous quarter.
The messages that dehumanize or degrade represent 46% of the total and register a decrease of 10 points compared to the previous quarter (56%). For their part, hate content that presents target groups as a threat to security and coexistence reached 33%. Likewise, 11% of the content incites the expulsion of these people, contributing to the reproduction of narratives of social exclusion.
Explicit aggressive language is present in 94% of hate speech content detected, fundamentally through the use of insults, threats, and disqualifications, which evidences a growing normalization of verbal violence on social networks.
The quarterly bulletin, co-financed by the European Union through the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), indicates that the trusted flagger channel stands out for its greater effectiveness compared to the removal of content through user reports.
Regarding the removal rate of racist and xenophobic content, the platform X has reached 75%, more than double that registered in the previous quarter (36%), with TikTok (86%) having the highest rate and Youtube (16%), the lowest.
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