Elon Musk arrives at the 10th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony on April 13, 2024, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (AP)

Spain's government emphasized on Tuesday that social media platforms must remain neutral and avoid interfering in the political matters of other nations, following comments from X's CEO Elon Musk regarding foreign nationals jailed for rape in Spain.

Pilar Alegría, the Spanish government's spokesperson, responded to questions about the ongoing dispute between Musk and European leaders, including Britain's Keir Starmer and France's Emmanuel Macron. "We believe that these platforms must always act with absolute neutrality and above all, without interfering," she said at a news conference.

Driving the news

Musk's comments came after he reposted a post from the account Visegrad24 on Sunday, which included a screenshot of an article from La Razon newspaper about rape convictions in Catalonia. The article, published in September 2023, carried the headline: "91% of those convicted for rape in Catalonia are foreigners," with a subheading noting that "immigrants make up 17% of the region's total population."

A spokesperson for the Catalan region's Justice Department confirmed the data, which showed that 22 out of 24 people convicted or on remand for rape charges in Catalonia were non-Spanish nationals.

"We can't allow democracy to fall into the hands of tech billionaires allied with the far right," said Salvador Illa, Catalonia's Socialist leader, at a Barcelona event on Tuesday. "We won’t allow anyone to use Catalonia’s name to spread hate speech," he added, though he did not directly mention Musk.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose immigration policies have faced criticism from the far-right party Vox, has rejected any connection between immigration and crime. "Foreigners are neither better nor worse than Spaniards" in terms of criminality, Sanchez said.

According to a report from Spain's Interior Ministry in September, crime rates in Spain have either remained steady or decreased every year since 2011. The report concluded that "the immigration phenomenon is not having a negative or significant impact on crime rates."