Alex Trelinski
SPAIN’S government has unveiled plans to ban companies from making spam calls to potential customers.
An amendment to the Consumer Care Services Act would force landline and mobile phone providers to block such calls from firms that don’t use a specific phone prefix which people could identify in advance.
An irony is that many current spam calls tend to come from telecoms companies.
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Consumer Affairs minister, Pablo Bustinduy, said “Blocking unsolicited commercial calls would protect the well-being and privacy of consumers.”
Commercial calls would be identified with ‘a specific code, a dedicated prefix’, according to Bustinduy.
“Phone companies would block calls from any firm not having a code,” he added.
A telecoms law passed in 2023 placed restrictions on spam calls but firms have looked at loopholes including people having given consent by accepting cookies on a website, or an ex-customer that has not asked for their data to be removed.
Bustinduy also wants to void any contract resulting from spam calls and to oblige companies to renew consumer consent for commercial calls every two years.
“We want to discourage this business model and make companies stop engaging in these practices that cause so much bother to citizens,” the minister said.
According to a 2023 study carried out in 39 countries by US security company Hiya, 42% of calls in Spain in the third quarter of that year were unsolicited- the second-highest percentage in Europe.
Bustinduy said the measures would be introduced via amendments to a consumer rights bill to be debated in Congress over the next few weeks.
He suggested that everything could be approved ‘before the summer’.
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