MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Twitter’s temporary suspension of the far-right Vox party’s account last year after it posted anti-immigrant messages was reasonable and proportional.
Twitter banned Vox from posting for eight days last January after the party tweeted that immigrants of Maghrebi origin were responsible for the vast majority of crimes committed in the Catalonia region, shortly before local elections were held.
The social-media giant said the post incited hatred against the immigrant community.
Vox, which has campaigned against immigration and feminism and targeted LGBT people and other minorities, appealed the ban to the Spanish electoral board, which found in favour of Twitter.
Arguing the ban infringed on its freedom of speech during an election period, the party turned to the Supreme Court, which on Tuesday rejected the appeal and said Vox had to respect Twitter’s community rules.
Vox, which had already taken Twitter to court over a previous ban in 2020, declined to comment on the latest ruling. Twitter also declined to comment.
The party has 52 seats in Spain’s 350-seat lower house and aims to secure its first share of power in a regional government after taking 17% of the vote in Castile and Leon’s local elections.
With general elections less than a year and a half away, Vox is on track for around 19% of votes, up four points from the last elections in 2019, according to polls published by Spain’s El Pais newspaper on Monday.
(Reporting by Christina Thykjaer; Editing by Nathan Allen, Frank Jack Daniel and Andrea Ricci)
