The new Film and Audiovisual Culture Law once again stops short of completion. The call for general elections to be held on November 29 closes the legislature with the project still in processing and, for now, maintains the legal framework approved in 2007. It is the second time that a reform designed to adapt regulation to the contemporary audiovisual sector falters due to the dissolution of Parliament.
The news can be read as yet another parliamentary dossier that doesn’t arrive in time. For the industry, however, the effect is far more concrete: series, platforms, independent production and data transparency will continue waiting for a framework that aimed to recognize how the business has changed since the arrival of streaming. That postponement becomes more than just a calendar issue.
According to information published by El País, the Culture Committee’s drafting panel had begun to work only a few days before the snap election, after dozens of extensions to the deadline for amendments. The text thus reached the decisive phase with very little political margin.
The reform had progressed, but not enough
The project was not at an embryonic stage. The official record of Congress shows that amendments in their entirety were rejected on June 18 by 175 votes to 172, and that the Plenary decided to proceed with the final vote on the law by 345 votes to 1. In July amendments to the articles had already been published.
That matters because the project had overcome a significant political hurdle. There wasn’t an approved law, but there wasn’t a proposal shelved in a drawer either. The dissolution of Parliament cuts short a process that had already consumed two years of processing in this legislature and, moreover, revived a text that also faltered after the 2023 elections.
The repetition explains part of the mismatch. When the Government recovered the project in 2024, it again presented a reform aimed precisely at updating Law 55/2007. Two years later, the market has continued to advance while the regulation that was meant to accompany it returns to the starting point of parliamentary deliberation.
What stays out when the Film Law collapses
Among the measures that are now left unapproved were the official recognition of series within the audiovisual framework, greater protection of film heritage, changes in support for independent production and transparency obligations for large platforms about audiences and viewing. It also contemplated reserving at least 35% of certain aids for productions led by women and strengthening incentives for works in co-official languages.
The data aspect is especially meaningful. ActualTV had already analyzed how the reform could reduce opacity of streaming audiences. With the project falling, that asymmetry does not disappear: platforms continue to control much of the information about the real performance of their content and the regulator does not gain the transparency tool proposed by the new law.
The 2007 gap is no longer just a matter of age
A 2007 law can still be useful if its architecture withstands market changes. The problem is that the Spanish audiovisual sector in 2026 hardly resembles what it was nineteen years ago. Platforms compete for rights and talent, series are part of the same production ecosystem as cinema, exploitation windows have shortened, and a growing portion of consumption occurs on services that publish their data according to their own criteria.
This shift is also evident in television. The consumption data analyzed by ActualTV shows to what extent streaming can no longer be treated as an appendix to traditional audiovisual. The new law was precisely trying to bring administrative language closer to that industrial reality.
That is why the effect of the snap election cannot be reduced to “a law will have to wait.” What is expected is an update of the rules with which the State recognizes, funds and measures an industry that has already changed in scale and channels. The disconnect between regulation and market continues to widen.
The next Government won’t start without groundwork, but it will have to reopen the parliamentary route
The accumulated debate does not disappear. The text, the amendments, the positions of the groups and the sector’s demands are documented and can serve as a basis for a future initiative. But legally, the new legislature will have to restart the process if it wants to approve a comparable rule.
There lies the paradox of this reform: the longer it takes, the harder it becomes for the text to reach approval intact. Each year adds new distribution models, new consumption habits and new conflicts over data, artificial intelligence, rights and corporate concentration. A law designed to update 2007 risks needing another update even before it is born.
For the Spanish audiovisual sector, the immediate consequence is simple: the current framework remains in place and modernization is postponed once again. The question is no longer merely when the Film Law will return to Congress, but how much the business will have changed by the time it does.
