Recording and consent
Recording a session in Spain.
Spanish law permits a participant to record their own conversation, and the strict obligations come from the data protection act rather than the criminal code. That is Código Penal article 197 and the Ley Orgánica 3/2018, and the sentence a practitioner says out loud before recording is the same one in every country on this site.
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
01The sentence
Say this, out loud, before anything else is said.
I am going to record this session so I can write you a proper report afterwards. Is that all right with you?
It is the same sentence everywhere, because a specific disclosure followed by a direct question is what recording guidance favours over a vague notice, and because everybody in the session agreeing is safe in every jurisdiction on this site. What changes by place is who has to answer it.
02Who has to agree
In Spain the rule is one party, with a strict data law on top.
The statute Código Penal article 197 and the Ley Orgánica 3/2018
Article 197 of the criminal code punishes the interception of another person's communications, and the Constitutional Court has held that a party to a conversation who records it is not intercepting a communication of another, so the offence does not reach them. What does reach them is data protection: the recording is personal data, the practitioner is the controller, and Spain's supervisory authority is one of the most active enforcers in Europe by number of decisions issued each year.
You may record. Tell the client anyway, name the purpose in the same sentence, and set a retention period, because in Spain the complaint that actually gets made is a data protection complaint and it is answered with what the person was told.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
Spain sets the digital age of consent at 14, which is lower than most of Europe, so a fourteen year old can in principle consent to processing. For a paid session producing a report a parent will read, ask the parent, because the report is a disclosure to a third party and the student is entitled to know it is happening. Written parental authorisation is the ordinary Spanish practice for anybody under 14.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Ley Orgánica de Protección de Datos y garantía de los derechos digitales.
The Spanish act adds digital rights to the European baseline, including a right to digital disconnection and specific rules on recordings in the workplace. The Agencia Española de Protección de Datos issues more enforcement decisions than any other European authority, and its published decisions on recordings turn repeatedly on whether the person was told the purpose at the time.
05What Slide Practice does
The audio goes as soon as the report is written.
At upload the practitioner confirms on screen that everyone in the session agreed. That confirmation is stored, and the footer of the report prints the date it was given.
Session audio is deleted as soon as the write-up is made. The The text of what was said, written out from the recording. stays with the The written page a client receives after a session: what was covered, what went well, what they agreed to do, and what is next., on the client's own page, and both are kept until the account is closed. Closing an account starts a 30 day window, at the end of which everything is deleted rather than archived.
Nothing is drafted from a recording until the practitioner has confirmed that everyone agreed, and nothing reaches a client until a person has read it. The whole of what is kept, and for how long, is on the security page and in the privacy policy.
06Where this came from
Two primary sources, and neither of them is us.
- Código Penal, Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Ley Orgánica 3/2018 de Protección de Datos Personales, Boletín Oficial del Estado
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
Nearby
- Recording a session in the Netherlands
- Recording a session in Sweden
- Every jurisdiction, and how permission works in the product
- What the report itself looks like, practice by practice
Bring one recording you already have permission for, and read what comes back. No account and no card.