Spain's 17 Regions Sign a Joint Defence of Their Gambling Powers Against Madrid

A working document submitted to the national regulator and the Gambling Policy Council on 7 September says Madrid's attempt to "coordinate" the protection of vulnerable players in land-based gambling is an attempt to direct powers the constitution gave the regions. Madrid's Ramón Cubián: "The autonomous communities are the authorities dealing with these matters every day."

• Spain's 17 autonomous communities have signed a joint document defending their competence over land-based gambling, including venue licensing and operating conditions, against what they describe as overreach by the Directorate-General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ), SBC News reports from comments Madrid's Ramón Cubián gave to AZAR Plus at the Expo Congress in Madrid
• The text was submitted to the DGOJ and the Gambling Policy Council on 7 September after discussions among all 17 regional administrations that began on 14 July; Cubián, Madrid's director-general responsible for gambling, said it is "not a political text" but "a working document defending freedom and the powers of the autonomous communities"
• The dispute dates from the 2025 Gambling Policy Council, when, on Cubián's account, the DGOJ proposed a coordinating role over protections for vulnerable customers in land-based gambling: "There was an attempt to assume a coordinating role over the autonomous communities, telling us what we had to do"
• The regions ask that any national reform preserve their authority over venues and that decisions on land-based gambling, "including any future forms of retail distribution", be taken with regional participation through the council
• The DGOJ, under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, is pursuing a universal €600 daily deposit limit across all licensed online operators and a common algorithm for detecting risky play, with separate reporting of under-21s; operators complain that the technical specifications first promised in 2023 have still not been published
• Cubián backed stronger safeguards against identity theft online and said the coming amendment to the Gambling Act should "guarantee the framework for institutional collaboration"

Seventeen Governments, One Signature

Spain's gambling law splits competence by channel. Online gambling offered nationally is regulated by the DGOJ, a directorate of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs; land-based gambling, from casinos and bingo halls to the slot machines in every bar, is regulated by the 17 autonomous communities, each with its own law, licensing regime and tax. The Gambling Policy Council is the body where the two levels are supposed to meet.

The document the regions have signed is unusual because of who signed it. Madrid and most regions are governed by the Partido Popular, Catalonia, Asturias and Castilla-La Mancha by the Socialists who lead the national government, and the Basque Country by a nationalist-led coalition. Cubián's point that the text "brought together governments with different political priorities around a shared defence of regional responsibilities" is the substance of the story: on this question the regions are not divided by party, and the ministry has managed to unite them.

The trigger, on Cubián's account, was a proposal at last year's council for the DGOJ to coordinate the protection of vulnerable customers in land-based venues. The regions' answer is that they already do that, that the venues, the inspectors and the self-exclusion registers are theirs, and that a coordinating role is a directing role by another name. "Each autonomous community has a different political, economic, social and business reality," he said. "The specific circumstances of gambling differ in each community, as do the number of gambling venues and people's ways of life."

What the DGOJ Is Building

The ministry's projects are the context for the regions' alarm. The DGOJ is developing a universal deposit limit, under which a customer's €600 daily allowance would apply across every licensed online operator rather than at each one separately, and a common algorithm for identifying risky behaviour and requiring intervention, with separate reporting for players under 21. Both were first presented in 2023. Both are still without the technical documents operators need to build them, which SBC describes as a persistent frustration among licensees who cannot plan data flows, integrations or intervention procedures around a specification that does not exist.

The regions do not object to those tools for online gambling, which is not their competence. They object to the logic being extended to the retail floor, and Cubián's reference to "any future forms of retail distribution" suggests they are also thinking about what happens if the ministry's centralised systems become the model for land-based self-exclusion or for a single national player card.

The Ministry Has Made the Regions' Case for Them

A national regulator that has spent three years promising specifications for a universal deposit limit and has not delivered them is not in a strong position to tell 17 regional administrations that it should coordinate their inspectors. The regions' document is careful not to say that, and does not need to. Operators have been saying it about the online projects since 2024, and the regions have now said the same thing about their own field in a text signed by every government in the country.

Consumer Protection Is Where Centralisation Always Starts

No ministry proposes to take over the licensing of bingo halls. It proposes to protect vulnerable people, and protection requires common standards, and common standards require someone to set them. That is the argument Cubián describes hearing at the 2025 council, and his reply, that the regions "protect vulnerable people within their territories, because that is our responsibility", is the answer the German Länder gave the federal government before the 2021 treaty and the answer the US states give the CFTC now. The pattern is the same in every federal system: the centre claims the vulnerable, and the regions claim the venues.

The Gambling Act Amendment Is the Venue for This Fight

Cubián's last point is the practical one. The Gambling Act is being amended, and the regions want the amendment to write institutional collaboration into the law rather than leave it to a council the ministry chairs. A statutory guarantee of regional participation in decisions on land-based gambling is a modest ask in form and a large one in effect, because it would give the regions a veto the ministry does not currently have to respect.

Seventeen regions have told Madrid, on one page, that the casinos are theirs. The ministry still owes the operators the specifications it promised in 2023. Both facts will be on the table when the Gambling Act is opened.