"Moors, no" can be read in graffiti next to the Federation of Migrants of Lanzarote. Another similar graffiti appeared on a glass window in one of the busiest areas of Arrecife. Added to this are more with the message "Fuck Moors" or "Pateras out" which are scattered a few meters apart in the city's public spaces.
The dehumanization and incitement to violence against migrants flood social media with hate speech, which grows with the spread of hoaxes and, increasingly, spills over beyond the screen.
The Annual Report on the Monitoring of Hate Speech on Social Networks for the year 2024, published by the Government of Spain, reveals that people originating from North Africa, Africans in general, and people of African descent are the focus of the majority of hate messages published on online platforms. They are also the main victims of these graffiti.
This trend continues in 2025, according to the Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia (Oberaxe), hate speech on social media is mainly directed against people from North Africa (75%), against Muslim people (18%), and people of African descent (8%).
Messages against people from Africa are joined by the proliferation of messages against migrants as a group, regardless of their origin, closely followed by Islamophobic discourse.
In fifth place, racist messages against unaccompanied children and adolescents appear, who have been in the political and media spotlight for months due to tensions between the Canary Islands Government, the Spanish Government, and other autonomous communities governed by the Popular Party that oppose their reception
The 2024 report points to the stigmatization that occurs against communities displaying "visible religious markers" and which are often instrumentalized to create a narrative of "insecurity, criminalization" and other forms of exclusion. Furthermore, it indicates that these are not isolated incidents but rather "a form of structural symbolic violence" that reproduces stereotypes, disinformation, and polarization.
Specific episodes or natural disasters, such as the DANA in Valencia, were used to "fuel the discourse of hate." In addition to messages related to specific events, "a significant proportion" of hate messages "persists" regardless of context. The Observatory points out that social networks have become platforms for "reproducing and normalizing" racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Gypsyism, and anti-Semitism
Thus, the annual report warns that there is "a globalized imaginary of the migrant or Islamic threat," which "stigmatizes" population groups as if they were "a homogeneous bloc" and uses "any incident" to justify their rejection.
The Torre Pacheco episode and the young woman burned in Gran Canaria
The episode of violence on July 12 in Torre Pacheco, Murcia, where ultra groups organized to "hunt" migrants after an elderly man was brutally assaulted and the assault was attributed to a group of Moroccans, marked a record high in hate messages on social media. Ultimately, only one person was arrested, a young Moroccan with a prior record for theft, who was remanded in provisional custody and released three weeks later.
Amidst that episode, the leader of the far-right party Vox, Santiago Abascal, fanned the flames of hatred against migrants. He referred to migrants as a "plague" and asserted that "Moroccan illegals for sheer fun" beat up elderly Spaniards.
The ultra groups tried unsuccessfully to replicate the altercations in Torrepacheco at a migrant reception center in Gran Canaria following the incident in which a young African girl suffered severe burns after the mattress she was on caught fire with a young African man. The migrant was initially arrested as the alleged perpetrator of the young woman's injuries and later released two months later, after she recovered from some of her injuries and stated that he had tried to help her and that the "fire was accidental".
The Hate Speech Monitoring Bulletin on Social Networks, also prepared by Oberaxe, states that between July 1 and September 30, 2025, 331,817 hate messages were detected on social networks, reaching the year's maximum on July 12, when 32,892 hate messages were recorded. This coincided with media coverage of Torre Pacheco (Murcia) and with the episode that occurred in Gran Canaria on July 16. "The news generated messages that promoted violence and expulsion," indicates the Observatory, although it was later confirmed that the young man tried to help her.
Between July and September, the main keywords disseminated in hate speech included the words "shit," "trash," and "mena"
So far this year, between January 1 and November 20, 765,239 hate messages have been detected. Of these, only three out of ten have been removed. The majority use explicit aggressive language (85%), dehumanize migrants (46%), describe them as a threat (26%), incite their expulsion (14%), or violence against them (8%).
The authors of these messages are overwhelmingly men (95%).
In this regard, the Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia (Oberaxe) also pointed out in a publication revealed by El País that the majority of hate attacks on social media against athletes, 60%, were directed at a single player, FC Barcelona footballer Lamine Yamal, whom they called "moro de mierda" and "Mena".
Social Media's Lack of Response to Removing Hate Speech
The most hurtful messages are usually directed at groups rather than individuals. This investigation detected up to 2,870 hate contents with racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, or anti-Roma messages that could constitute a crime, an infraction, and violate the conduct rules of social platforms. In total, the study analyzed the networks most used by the population: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.
Most hate content was detected and reported on X (26%) and Facebook (25%), followed by Instagram (19%), TikTok (17%), and to a lesser extent, YouTube (13%).
Of the 758 hate messages detected on the platform *X*, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, **only 14% of those notified were removed.** It is not surprising, since the man who was until a few months ago part of Donald Trump's government team in the White House bought the platform in October 2022 after criticizing the platform's content moderation policy. An investigation had already warned that hate messages on this social network grew by 50% after it was acquired by the owner of TeslaIn this regard, the platforms *Facebook* and *Instagram*, from the Meta group, led by American Mark Zuckerberg, also did not remove most of the content identified as hate speech by the Spanish Government. Specifically, *Facebook* retained 71% of the detected hate messages and Instagram 51%.
The second most visited platform in the world, YouTube, owned by the American tech giant Google, also maintained the majority of comments classified as hate speech, leaving 73% of detected messages on the platform.
The most recent, the Chinese platform TikTok, owned by the company ByteDance, was the one that removed the most content after being notified. In total, it deleted 69% of the notified content. Of the content notified by standard users, it deleted 14% in less than 24 hours.
This research reveals that platforms' response is "ineffective" when an average user reports hate speech, especially within the first 24 and 48 hours, which is when the impact of hate speech could be reduced.
The aforementioned investigation by the Ministry of Social Inclusion states that this "scarce initial reaction" allows content that "dehumanizes, promotes stigma, or incites violence to remain visible and circulate widely".