SPANIARDS trust professional journalism more than they have in years, according to new research – while the country’s influencers have spent the summer lurching from one scandal to the next.
This years’ Digital News Report España 2026, produced by the University of Navarra for Oxford’s Reuters Institute, found trust in the news at 33%, two points up on 2025 and the first improvement after a decade of decline.
Interest in news rose three points to 54%, the highest figure in four years, with the biggest jumps among the over-65s and the 35-44 age group.
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Traditional news brands were rated far more credible than social media or artificial intelligence, with regional and local outlets the most trusted of all on 54%.
Concern about misinformation hit a record, with 74% of Spaniards worried about telling true from false online – up five points in a year and twelve since 2022.
The survey was carried out in late February, months before the scandals that have dominated Spanish social media since.
Una vuelta por La Vuelta con Erola Jons para disfrutar de los mejores momentos del backstage ??https://t.co/QLvzlxsA31#LaVuelta26 pic.twitter.com/qOmcr5tdho
— La Vuelta (@lavuelta) August 22, 2026
The most damaging landed at the Vuelta a España, which stripped its own hired content creator of access to riders after a stunt aimed at world champion Tadej Pogacar.
Erola Jons, 29, had been signed up by organisers Unipublic to front live streams on the race’s YouTube and Twitch channels and pull in a younger audience. She has more than six million followers across Instagram and TikTok.
Her usual content involves approaching men in the street with chat-up lines on hidden camera, filming their confusion until they realise they are being recorded. She has no background in cycling.
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On the opening stage in Monaco, Jons waited at the steps of the podium truck where Pogacar was changing into his leader’s jersey, called him ‘Pogachita’ and asked why he hyperventilates every time he sees her.
The Slovenian, who had just won the stage, looked baffled and replied that he breathes 24/7 before being led away by race staff.
Eurosport journalist Laura Meseguer wrote on Instagram that women had spent years fighting to be treated with respect in a male-dominated sport and to have the same opportunities as everyone else.
UAE Team Emirates-XRG complained to organisers about the way its rider had been approached.
Within 48 hours, Marca reported that Jons had been banned from the mixed zone, the team buses and any area where she could reach a rider. El País reported she would need permission from teams to speak to any cyclist.
Organisers also formally asked her to adjust the tone of her content to suit a top-level sporting event, but stopped short of sacking her.
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A Vuelta spokesman told cycling website Velo that Jons was taking part through an entertainment format designed to reach new audiences, using her own personality and humour.
Criticism was not confined to the Pogacar clip. Jons also made remarks to British rider Josh Tarling, whose brother Finlay died shortly before the race after a crash at the Volta a Portugal.
Jons was unrepentant, telling viewers before stage two that they had broken the internet the previous day.
She was not the only one having a bad summer. Burger King dropped streamer El Xokas over sexist comments, while Carliyo el Nervio called August’s solar eclipse a smokescreen to distract the public, then admitted he had gone to watch it and enjoyed it.
TikToker Fabiana Sevillano, 24, was widely mocked after telling her 2.2 million followers that people get ‘three months of summer’ every year while she had only had one. She had spent six months training for a boxing match and never used the word ‘holidays’.
Spanish workers are entitled to 30 days of leave a year, and roughly one in three cannot afford a week away from home.
The Navarra researchers found content creators and influencers are now used as a news source by close to a quarter of the Spanish audience – but rated as markedly less impartial and less trustworthy than journalists.
Pogacar’s own Vuelta ended on Saturday, when he crashed 32km from the finish of stage 8 between Puçol and Xeraco and was taken to hospital with shoulder and facial injuries. Enric Mas inherited the race lead.
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