Cerca del 60% de los contenidos analizados por OBERAXE presentan una visión deshumanizada de las personas extranjeras

The monitoring of the Spanish Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (OBERAXE), under the State Secretariat for Migration of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, has detected that 57% of the messages reported in February dehumanize people of foreign origin. These data represent an increase of 14 percentage points compared to the previous month (43%).

The second most frequent cause of the reported messages is that it is presented to the group as a threat (26%), a figure that decreases 10 percentage points compared to the previous month. The comments that promote the expulsion of the collective amount to 7%. On the other hand, there are 3% of messages that incite violence.

During the month of February, the celebration of Ramadan and the social debate on the use of the burka have been the main detonators of hate speech on social networks. To this is added the process of processing the royal decree of regularization, which continues to generate a high volume of disinformation, linked to anti-immigration messages.

The Islamophobic content is doubled

Most hate speech messages were addressed to people from North Africa (63%). Anti-Muslim messages reached 30%, which means that the rate of Islamophobic content doubled compared to the previous month, which was 14%. This increase coincides with the beginning of Ramadan, as well as with the political and social debate on the use of the burka in public spaces.

In addition, messages against people of African descent represented 11% of the reported comments, which reflects a decrease compared to the previous month, which stood at 15%.

In the month of February 2026, social media platforms withdrew 45% of the messages that were reported in January. Of these, 11% were withdrawn within the first week, while 34% were eliminated after being notified as a trusted flagger.

In addition, the FARO (Filtering and Hate Analysis in Social Networks) system, based on Artificial Intelligence, detected in the month of February 37,477 comments, which is 6.2% more than those detected the previous month.

TikTok the most effective platform in the withdrawal

The platform TikTok led the withdrawal of messages. It is followed by platform X, with a elimination percentage of 64%; a 100% withdrawal was reached on this platform via trusted flagged. Instagram deleted 30% of the comments, with a 16% improvement over the previous month. Facebook removed 26% of the reported content and 79% of it was deleted through the trusted flagger channel. Youtube recorded 9% of deleted content, of which 80% via trusted flagged.

20% of the analyzed messages are generated in the sports context

During the month of February the messages in social networks related to citizen insecurity reached 50%, which means a decrease of 4 percentage points compared to January. This evidences the instrumentalization of citizen insecurity to reproduce xenophobic and racist narratives that consolidate stereotypes based on false data that impact public opinion.

The sports field framed 20% of the messages analyzed in this Bulletin, which represents an increase of 3 percentage points compared to the previous month. One of the episodes that provoked the most hate speech was the match between Real Madrid and Benfica, which was stopped when the protocol against racism was activated due to insults to the player Vinicius. Also, Lamine Yamal’s social media posts linked to Ramadan produced numerous comments that questioned his membership of the Spanish national team.

Precisely to continue working towards social networks free of exclusion and violence, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez presented the international reference tool Footprint of Hate and Polarization (HODIO) during the opening of the first Forum Against Hate on March 11. The new tool will allow to calculate and publish periodically an indicator of hate and polarization in each social network that will include the prevalence, the level of amplification and the impact of hate and polarization speeches.