Maldita.es documented 1,183 videos showing explicit child sexual abuse on TikTok, which had amassed 48 million views. The organisation also identified more than 26,000 profiles of potential child-sex offenders commenting on and sharing the material. These are investigative findings and allegations, not a judicial determination about the people behind the profiles.
After the investigation, Youth and Children’s Minister Sira Rego said the ministry had asked prosecutors to investigate TikTok. On 9 November 2026, the ministry sent information and a written request to the Fiscalía General del Estado, asking it to act within its powers and take measures to protect children and adolescents who might be affected. The ministry is also considering suspending TikTok’s services in Spain, but no suspension has been announced.
Maldita.es gathered evidence over 35 days, from 16 October through 6 November 2026. The organisation published its investigation on 9 November and filed a complaint with the Fiscalía. Its inquiry examined TikTok content, including videos and livestreams, as well as private messages and the platform’s moderation systems, including automated tools. Maldita.es director Clara Jiménez Cruz said the scale of child sexual abuse on TikTok could not be compared with that on other platforms.
A sample of 50 videos reported through TikTok’s own channel offered a separate measure of the company’s response: TikTok removed five and blocked another 13 only in Spain. Three days after the report, 40% of the accounts that had posted those videos remained active. These figures apply to the sample, not all 1,183 videos. Maldita.es said it submitted the sample through TikTok’s reporting process to see how the platform handled those specific reports.
The ministry said the evidence pointed to serious shortcomings in content detection and moderation, and raised concerns about TikTok’s recommendation systems spreading the material. Rego has requested an urgent meeting with the platform’s representatives in Spain. She wants to hear their explanation and discuss immediate steps to protect children and adolescents, including safeguards already adopted.
The concerns go back further than this investigation. Maldita.es reported that a TikTok internal document from January 2022 recorded 112,000 livestreams featuring minors aged 13 to 15. Reports from TikTok’s internal records also emerged through a US court case in 2022, which acknowledged a problem with paedophilia on the platform. Maldita.es says it had published two earlier investigations into child sexual exploitation on TikTok.
Spain’s action came as TikTok faced separate scrutiny at EU level. On 6 November 2026, the European Commission preliminarily found that the platform’s “For You” recommendation feed may breach the Digital Services Act because of risks of harmful-content “rabbit holes,” particularly for vulnerable users and minors. The Commission’s proceeding concerns the design and operation of the recommender system. It is separate from Spain’s referral over alleged child sexual abuse material, and is neither a final infringement decision nor an order to suspend TikTok.
In a separate case involving online activity, RUSSPAIN.com reported on a police operation in which 14 people were arrested over the Núcleo Nacional investigation. TikTok, which Maldita.es contacted for this investigation, asked for more information but did not answer questions about its child-protection mechanisms, the identified failures or illegal content on its platform.
