Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Wednesday lined up with fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk in criticising Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, accusing him of pursuing a ‘dangerous’ proposal to ban social media access for under-16s.
The socialist (PSOE) leader unveiled a package of measures in Dubai on Tuesday, aimed at shielding Spanish minors from harmful online content, including violence and pornography. ALSO READ: Spain will seek to prohibit children aged under 16 from accessing social media.
Alongside the proposed age ban, Sánchez said Spain would seek to amend its laws so that senior executives at tech companies would ‘face criminal liability for failing to remove illegal or hateful content’.
In a post on his Telegram messaging platform on Wednesday, Durov warned of ‘dangerous new regulations that threaten your internet freedoms’. Telegram, which is known for its privacy-focused design, claims around a billion users worldwide.
‘These measures could turn Spain into a surveillance state under the guise of ‘protection’,’ he wrote, arguing that their implementation would lead to widespread data collection and censorship.
Durov later shared the same post from Telegram on X (see below).
Sánchez replied on X with a reworked line attributed to Miguel de Cervantes’s 17th-century novel Don Quixote, suggesting that criticism was proof he was on the right path.
‘Let the techno-oligarchs bark, Sancho, it’s a sign that we are riding,’ Sánchez wrote (see below).
Spanish government sources later accused Durov of using his ‘unrestricted control’ of Telegram to distribute a message to Spanish users containing ‘lies and illegitimate attacks’.
They said the episode underlined ‘the urgent need to regulate social media and mobile messaging apps’.
Musk, meanwhile, had already responded angrily to Sánchez’s announcement on Tuesday, posting a series of messages on his platform X in which he branded the prime minister ‘dirty’, a ‘tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain’ and ‘the true fascist totalitarian’. ALSO READ: Musk calls Sánchez a ‘fascist totalitarian’ and ‘tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain’ in new clash.
The SpaceX and Tesla chief has previously clashed publicly with Sánchez over the government’s decision to regularise the status of hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants.ALSO READ: Sánchez to Musk: ‘Mars can wait. Humanity can’t’ – in defence of Spain’s migrant policy.
Spain’s proposed ban on social media use for under-16s follows Australia’s move in December to become the first country to introduce such a restriction.
France, Greece and Denmark have also been at the forefront of efforts to push for similar measures across the European Union.
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Today, Telegram notified all its users in Spain with this alert:
Pedro Sánchez’s government is pushing dangerous new regulations that threaten your internet freedoms. Announced just yesterday, these measures could turn Spain into a surveillance state under the guise of…
— Pavel Durov (@durov) February 4, 2026
Deja que los tecno-oligarcas ladren, Sancho, es señal de que cabalgamos.
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) February 4, 2026
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