Seven conditions, a twenty-degree threshold, and one article that switches off the time slots on video platforms. Those are the numbers that decide a UGC campaign with alcohol in Spain, and almost none of them matches what gets repeated in meetings.
Let us start with the biggest mistake: advertising alcoholic drinks is not prohibited in Spain.
What the law actually prohibits
Article 123.3 of the General Audiovisual Communication Act does not prohibit advertising alcohol. It prohibits audiovisual commercial communication for alcoholic drinks that meets any of seven conditions. The difference is not semantic: it turns a scriptwriter's job from "we cannot" into "there are seven things to check".
The seven conditions, translated into a shooting plan
a) Being specifically aimed at minors or showing minors consuming. This affects casting, tone and the location of the shoot.
b) Associating consumption with improved physical performance or with driving. Out goes the shot of the glass before a run, and the car keys on the table.
c) Giving the impression that consumption contributes to social or sexual success, or linking it to ideas or behaviours expressing personal, family, social, sporting or professional success. This is the condition that kills the most scripts, because it is exactly the default story of a drinks campaign.
d) Suggesting therapeutic properties, a stimulant or sedative effect, that it is a way to resolve conflict, or that it benefits health. Goodbye to "a glass to unwind" and to the glass of wine with the nod to the heart.
e) Encouraging immoderate consumption or giving a negative image of abstinence or sobriety. This reaches both the endless round and the joke about the person drinking water.
f) Highlighting alcohol content as a positive quality. The strength can appear as a fact, not as a selling point.
g) Failing to include a message of moderate and low-risk consumption.
The positive obligation everyone forgets
Condition g) deserves a second reading, because it is written the other way round from the rest. The first six describe things the piece must not do. The seventh describes something the piece must contain: communication that does not include a message of moderate and low-risk consumption is prohibited.
In a twenty-second vertical video that is not a post-production detail. It is a script element, and you decide before the shoot whether it goes in voice, on screen, or both, and how long it stays up so that it can actually be read.
Twenty degrees, and where the clock matters
Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the same article introduce the threshold everyone quotes.
Drinks above twenty degrees may only be the subject of audiovisual commercial communication between 1:00 and 5:00. Those at twenty degrees or below, between 20:30 and 5:00, with an exception where the communication forms an indivisible part of the acquisition of rights and the production of the signal to be broadcast.
On a video platform those hours do not apply
Here is the point almost nobody checks, and the one that decides whether a campaign is viable.
Article 91.1 of the same act, setting out the obligations of video-sharing platform providers, states expressly that the time limitation of paragraphs 4 and 5 of article 123 shall not apply to them.
Put differently: the schedule of slots was born for linear broadcasting and the act itself switches it off in the platform world. Carrying "only after 20:30" over to a social post applies a rule the text has turned off in precisely that place.
| What you are looking at | In linear broadcasting | On a video-sharing platform |
|---|---|---|
| Drink above 20 degrees | only between 1:00 and 5:00 | the slot does not apply (art. 91.1) |
| Drink at 20 degrees or below | only between 20:30 and 5:00 | the slot does not apply (art. 91.1) |
| The seven conditions of art. 123.3 | they apply | they apply |
What does travel to the platform
The hours falling away does not mean the rest does. The seven content conditions of article 123.3 remain the reference, and article 91 itself organises how they are met in the platform environment: for the commercial communications the provider markets, sells or organises, by guaranteeing compliance; for the rest, through the terms of service and a functionality for whoever uploads a video to declare whether it contains audiovisual commercial communication.
Three positions, not one
It is worth keeping in mind which route the obligation takes to each actor, because the split is not intuitive.
The platform provider answers for compliance regarding the commercial communications it markets, sells or organises itself, and for the rest through the terms of service and the declaration functionality.
The creator may additionally be caught by obligations of their own if they fit the figure of user of special relevance in article 94, whose five requirements are cumulative and worth reading one by one before assuming they are met.
The brand answers for what it commissions, pays for and approves. It is the most exposed position in an alcohol campaign, because the script comes from there.
Confusing the three is what produces briefs nobody can comply with, and arguments in which each party cites a different rule without being wrong.
What an alcohol piece can still show
Read in one go, the seven conditions look as if they leave nothing. They leave a good deal, and it is worth writing it down so the team does not censor itself beyond what is required.
The product and how it is made. Where it comes from, how it is produced, which variety, which vintage, what sets that house apart from the one next door.
Serving and pairing. The right glass, the temperature, which dish it works with, how to keep an open bottle.
The craft. The person who makes it, the winery, the process, the agricultural calendar. This is where the story is richest and where none of the seven conditions gets in the way.
The purchase context. Where to find it, in which formats, what to look for on the label.
What falls away is one specific thing, always the same: the video that makes consumption the cause of something good. Everything else remains available.
The brief for an alcohol campaign
Five decisions, taken before anyone is called in.
- The moderate-consumption message is part of the script, with its placement and duration written down.
- The story cannot be the usual one: no social success, no unwinding, no celebration that depends on the drink.
- Casting and background are reviewed against condition a), including the people walking past behind.
- Strength is a fact, never an argument.
- The applicable regional rules are checked, because the autonomous communities have powers in this area and the national reading does not exhaust the question.
Sources
- Law 13/2022, General Audiovisual Communication Act, art. 123
- Law 13/2022, art. 91, obligations on video-sharing platforms
- Law 13/2022, art. 94, users of special relevance
Checked on 10 September 2026. This guide is not legal advice and does not replace an examination of the individual case. Where this guide and the official source diverge, the source prevails.
