The Spanish Supreme Court’s judgment from 10 July 2025 adds a significant new chapter to the debate on privacy, image rights, and journalism in the digital era by confronting head-on the controversial question of whether photographs obtained from open social media profiles can be freely reproduced by the press to illustrate news of public interest.
Facts of the case
The wife of a former government minister, acting on her own behalf and representing her minor son, sued the director of a digital daily and the company operating the site for publishing photographs of hers, drawn from her public Twitter/X profile. The photographs were used in reports covering the plaintiff’s personal ties to the former minister. In one publication, a photograph also appeared in which the face of her minor son was identifiable. The plaintiff sought compensation for moral damages and the removal of the contested images, invoking unlawful interference with the fundamental right to one’s own image.
At first instance, the claim was dismissed: the court considered the plaintiff a public figure, whose image was already widely known in the media and on social networks. As for the son, the first-instance court found that it had not been proven that the defendants published his photo.
The second instance court partially reversed the first-instance decision, recognising unlawful interference in several of the publications concerning the plaintiff and her son.
The defendants filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, arguing that the photographs were lawfully used under the constitutional protection of freedom of information, given the acknowledged public interest of the underlying news.
Right to image vs. freedom of information
The heart of the Supreme Court’s decision lay in a delicate balancing act between the right to one’s own image and freedom of information.
The appellants claimed that the lower-instance court had ignored this balance by reducing the analysis to the lack of authorisation for the publication of the photographs. They argued that the publication of the images was pertinent, because its purpose was “to put a face to the name” of the plaintiff in the article. Additionally, they argued that the veracity of the published news had not been disputed, nor its public interest and that it is undeniable that the plaintiff was a public figure because she had held certain public or administrative positions of trust.
The Court, however, stressed that freedom of information cannot be understood as an unlimited licence to reproduce images.
Drawing on its own precedent, the Court dismissed the appeal and emphasised that:
- social media users continue to hold fundamental rights, and the content of those rights remains the same in the digital era;
- a social media profile is not a “public place”. In Spanish law, the concept of a “place open to the public” features in the Organic Law 1/1982, of 5 May 1982, on civil protection of the right to honor, personal and family privacy, and one’s own image, which stipulates that the right to one’s own image does not impede “its capture, reproduction, or publication by any means when it concerns persons holding a public office or a profession of notoriety or public profile and the image is captured during a public event or in places open to the public. …” (Art. 8.2.). The Supreme Court now clarifies that a social media profile is not “a place open to the public” within the meaning of the Organic Law;
- the act of uploading a photograph to a social media network does not constitute consent to republication by the press;
- the authorisation for the use of images contained in social media’s “terms of use” can hardly be considered consent based on reliable information, because the terms are a lengthy document located in a place on the website that is difficult for the user to access, and the language of the terms is difficult to understand;
- there must be a connection between the shown images and the information disseminated by a public media outlet. In this case, the publication of the image bore no relation to the content of the news, i.e. the photograph was unrelated to the news event itself; and
- neutral photographs are also protected. The term refers to photographs that do not contain graphic information about the private or family life of the person portrayed but still identify the subject and therefore fall under image rights.
To conclude, the Court placed clear limits on the media’s reliance on images sourced from digital platforms, reaffirming that the right to one’s own image remains protected in an online environment.
Comment
The Court’s decision from 10 July 2025 reinforces the centrality of the right to one’s own image in the digital context. By rejecting the argument that accessibility on Twitter/X amounted to implicit consent, the Court placed a firm boundary on journalistic practices that might otherwise normalise the indiscriminate harvesting of personal images from online profiles.
At the same time, the ruling underscores the Court’s balancing of competing rights. Freedom of information, while constitutionally protected, cannot be exercised in a way that empties other fundamental rights of their substance.
Importantly, the Court extended this reasoning to “neutral” photographs, affirming that even non-intimate images, when recognisable, are shielded by the right to one’s own image. This point is particularly relevant in an era where social media platforms encourage constant sharing of personal visuals that can easily be detached from their original context.
