Best VPNs for Spain

Spain is one of the better countries in terms of internet freedom. Still, if you live outside the country’s borders, it is possible that you will come across some specific sites that are blocked. The main reason for this would be copyright infringement, a sensitive topic handled in a retaliatory manner by the government. Though there are no restrictions on the actual access to the internet, some content that is deemed to violate law – most notably the Ley Sinde – will not be available to anybody, whether in or outside Spain’s borders. In terms of internet freedom, the country is a hybrid land where public and otherwise free information about Spain are also available online for free, whereas financially exploitable content (by whoever) is subject to somewhat more government control.

The most recent and significant change in the Spanish online legal envirovment is the Ley Sinde law of 2011. It is primarily aimed against copyright infringements. Spain bears one of the worst statistics in terms of online copyright infringement. This ranges anywhere from illegal movie and music downloads to CD-based unlawful trade, even today, well into the dawn of digital sales. Spain is also on the United States’ Special 301 report watch list: this means that they are considered to be distrustful in terms of copyright violation. Wanting to avoid trade restrictions, Ley Sinde was passed after several revisions. It can be argued then that both internal and external pressures played part in the creation of this sentiment.

The Ley Sinde law thus also affects internet censorship to some degree. However, Spain is still a relatively acceptable country in terms of internet freedom. More extreme themes and content are usually banned, such as child pornography, supporting terrorism, genocide denial and provoking hatred, extreme social behavior. Repercussion is usually more severe than elsewhere; prison sentences of multiple years and sizeable fines are imposed upon violators. Nevertheless, it can be asserted that for general internet usage, Spain is almost convenient. We also have to raise concern about the hardship of the Spanish economy and political system in recent years. Since these negative changes also affected (and affect) the press, we advise you to take the content you read (any kind of news for example) with a pinch of salt.

Based on the above, we would also like to suggest some choices of VPN providers to choose and avoid. First, we would generally like to advise you not to use VPN connection with public IPs. They are more prone to be associated with a provider and to (geo)blocking. Therefore we would like to recommend HideMyAss. They work with a pool of over 100,000 individual IP addresses, so you are sure to find more than enough for your VPN adventures. With servers in Barcelona, Alicante, Madrid and other locations in Spain, there is always a nearby location to hide your true IP. While the several hundred VPN servers in the US, UK and over 210 other countries facilitate accessing content not available in Spain itself. PureVPN is also a good choice in this matter, not to mention their widespread device support that suits you in all online situations. Finally, we would like to give a point to VyprVPN. Their use of Dynamic Shared IPs is interesting and while we presume some may be public, the overwhelming list of 200,000 addresses should satisfy your privacy needs.