The joint submission demonstrates that Spain’s courts prohibited a civic consumer information campaign for over six years without ever ruling on its compatibility with freedom of expression, despite the national competition regulator’s own finding that the campaign caused no demonstrable harm to competition.
Assemblea Nacional Catalana and the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) have submitted a joint letter to the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, and the experts of the Working Group on Business and Human Rights concerning the prohibition of Assemblea’s Consum Estratègic (“Strategic Consumption”) campaign by the Spanish civil courts.
Consum Estratègic, launched by Assemblea in November 2018, centred on a website where consumers could look up companies that had voluntarily registered their own business practices, including whether their services were available in Catalan. It was launched as part of Assemblea’s wider Eines de País strategy, days after a wave of corporate relocations out of Catalonia following the 2017 independence referendum. The website did not sell goods or generate revenue; it simply connected consumers with businesses that had registered voluntarily. Following a complaint from Foment del Treball Nacional, Catalonia’s largest employers’ association, a Barcelona commercial court ordered the site closed in December 2019. It has remained offline ever since.
Spain’s competition authority, the CNMC, investigated the campaign directly with the companies said to be affected and closed its file in June 2022, finding no impact on competition. Four months later, a commercial court declared the same conduct unlawful, a ruling upheld on appeal in 2024. The Supreme Court admitted the case in March 2026 as raising a genuine question of interest concerning boycott under unfair competition law. No Spanish court has yet ruled on whether the campaign was protected expression.
Assemblea and UNPO argue the closure raises concerns under Articles 19 and 22 of the ICCPR, given that no Spanish authority has shown the specific threat required to justify so long a restriction, and under Article 27, since the availability of services in Catalan was among the criteria the domestic courts treated as improperly “ideological.”
Assemblea and UNPO call on the Special Rapporteurs and the Working Group on Business and Human Rights to issue a Joint Allegation Letter to Spain, to seek clarification on the exposure of non-profit organisations to competition proceedings over non-commercial advocacy, and to address the case in relevant thematic reporting on civic space.