Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced sweeping plans at the World Government Summit in Dubai to hold social media executives criminally liable and curb platform algorithms, prompting a sharp and profane response from X owner Elon Musk.

Sánchez laid out five measures in a speech, with implementation set to begin next week.

"Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain," Musk wrote on X, using an explicit insult and a poop emoji.

Sánchez framed the proposals by describing social media as a lawless digital ecosystem, arguing that platforms have become a "failed state" where disinformation, hate speech and criminal activity flourish without accountability.

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Sánchez also appeared to take aim at Musk directly, criticizing the X owner for amplifying what he described as false claims about Spain’s immigration policy and allowing harmful content to spread on the platform.

"Just last week, the owner of X, a migrant himself, used his personal account to amplify disinformation about the sovereign decision by my government, the regularization of 500,000 migrants that live, work and contribute to the success of our country," Sánchez said.

Under the plan, Spain would first amend its laws to hold platform executives criminally liable for failing to remove illegal or hateful content, exposing executives to potential prosecution.

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Sánchez said governments must stop turning "a blind eye to the toxic content shared under their watch."

Second, Spain would make the algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal content a new criminal offense, targeting both disinformation actors and the platforms whose systems promote their content for profit.

"Disinformation doesn’t appear by itself," Sánchez said. "It is created, promoted and spread by certain actors."

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Third, Sánchez announced the creation of a "hate and polarization footprint," a system to track and quantify how platforms fuel division and spread hate, which would serve as the basis for future legal and financial penalties.

"For too long, hate has been treated as invisible and untraceable," Sánchez said. "Spreading hate must come at a cost."

Fourth, Spain will ban access to social media for children under 16, requiring mandatory age-verification systems that Sánchez said must function as real barriers, not simple check boxes.

"Today, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone," Sánchez said, describing social media as a realm of "addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation [and] violence."

Finally, Sánchez said his government will work with public prosecutors to investigate alleged violations by Grok, TikTok and Instagram, vowing zero tolerance and warning that Spain would defend its digital sovereignty against foreign interference.

"We are fighting back," he said. "And we will continue to do so."

As the United States experiences negative net migration due to President Donald Trump policies, Spain is heading in the opposite direction, announcing plans to grant legal status for up to half a million illegal migrants.

Spain’s Socialist-led government approved a royal decree on Tuesday, allowing unauthorized immigrants who entered the country before the end of 2025 and who have lived there for at least five months and have no criminal record to obtain one-year residency and work permits with possible pathways to citizenship.

While many European governments have moved to tighten immigration policies — some encouraged by the Trump administration’s hardline approach — Spain has taken a different path. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his ministers have repeatedly highlighted what they describe as the economic benefits of legal migration, particularly for the country’s aging workforce.

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Spain "will not look the other way," Migration Minister Elma Saiz told reporters at a news conference, saying the government is "dignifying and recognizing people who are already in our country."

The plan has sparked a fierce political battle, as conservatives and the populist Vox party have condemned what they describe as an amnesty that could fuel irregular migration.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal wrote on social media that the measure "harms all Spaniards," arguing critics of his party are motivated by fear of Vox’s growing influence. 

"They are not worried about the consequences of Sánchez’s criminal policies," Abascal wrote. "They are worried that Vox will gain more strength."

Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that "Spain’s decision appears calculated to increase the lure of Europe as a destination for illegal migrants in general, causing problems for all of its neighbors. 

"If Spain wishes to become a repository for such people, then I’m sure other European countries would appreciate signing agreements to transfer their own illegal migrants there. Absent this, we will all be paying the price for Spanish largesse."

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Ricard Zapata-Barrero, a political science professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, told Fox News Digital, "This is not a symbolic gesture. It is a direct challenge to the dominant European approach, which treats irregular migration primarily as a policing issue. Spain, instead, frames it as a governance problem, one that requires institutional capacity, legal pathways and administrative realism rather than more detention centers and externalized borders."

He said Spain’s immigration system had been showing signs of strain for years.

"When hundreds of thousands of people live in irregularity for years, the issue stops being an individual failure and becomes a structural one," Zapata-Barrero said. "In this context, regularization is not leniency — it is governability.

"In a Europe closing in on itself, Spain has taken a step that sets it apart — not because it is ‘softer,’ but because it is more pragmatic," he added. "Whether this becomes a model or a counter-model inside the EU remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: Spain has launched a political experiment that Europe will watch closely."

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

A Turkish Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Barcelona Thursday morning after a passenger created a hoax threat by setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot suggesting there was a "bomb threat" on board, according to airline officials.  

The emergency protocol was alerted when Flight 1853 was already approaching its intended designation at Barcelona-El Prat Airport from Istanbul. Euronews said the Airbus A321, which was carrying 148 passengers and seven crew members, was directed to a designated area for inspection upon landing. 

"​​It was detected that a passenger had created an in-flight internet access point and named the network in a way that included a bomb threat," Yahya Üstün, senior vice president of communications at Turkish Airlines, said in a post on X.

Simpleflying reported that the flight was cruising over the Mediterranean when a flight crew member noticed an alarming Wi-Fi name that reportedly said, "I have a bomb, everyone will die."  

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Necessary safety procedures were immediately initiated following the alert, Üstün said. 

The aircraft was then escorted by two fighter jets, one Spanish and one French, during the emergency protocol, Euronews reported.  

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Following the aircraft’s safe landing, response crews inspected the plane and worked to identify the passenger who created the threatening Wi-Fi hotspot name, airline officials said. The operation involved Spanish authorities such as personnel from the Civil Guard, the National Police and Catalonia’s regional police and fire services, according to Euronews.

According to footage from the scene, a dog was deployed to examine the passenger's luggage on the tarmac. 

However, "no irregularities were found" following a thorough inspection, according to officials.  

"Our aircraft's return flight will be carried out after the completion of passenger boarding," Üstün said. 

Operations at Barcelona-El Prat Airport resumed normally following the explosive scare, Reuters reported.

Reuters contributed to this report.