The nature and scale of EFE are not always widely understood. In the interests of providing a clearer understanding of its activities and presence in the news market, the Agency has updated its key data and made it available to the general public. We are a public news agency accountable to the Spanish Parliament, the Court of Auditors, the General State Comptroller (IGAE), the State Industrial Holding Company (SEPI) and the European Commission. Internally, EFE adheres to a strict Code of Ethics governing the gathering and editing of news, with decisions taken collectively.
This internal quality control is further reinforced by the Editorial Council, the professional representative body of the Agency’s journalists, which oversees the newsroom’s journalistic activities through a Statute approved on 18 May 2006. The Spanish News Agency EFE maintains an unequivocal commitment to compliance with all applicable legislation across every area of its operations. Its public-service mission and commitment to the general interest guide its work towards contributing to a more transparent, principled and responsible society by providing rigorous, accurate, independent and pluralistic information. EFE also has a Compliance Committee, responsible for fostering the development of a strong ethical culture through its advisory and supervisory functions.
The Spanish News Agency EFE is firmly committed to fulfilling all its corporate obligations, both those required by law and those voluntarily undertaken. This commitment to compliance is a fundamental pillar of EFE’s sustainable growth and extends to all its stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, business partners and other interested parties.
The Agency’s Ethics Channel provides access to the key policies and procedures that form part of its compliance system and have been approved by the Board of Directors.
The Spanish News Agency EFE’s internal compliance framework includes the following:
The rules governing the Ethics Channel, including the Policy and Procedure for the management of the internal reporting system, include the following:
Respect for legal principles and ethical values is firmly embedded in a culture of transparency and good governance, zero tolerance for corruption, equal opportunities, respect for human rights and professionalism in every aspect of the Agency’s activities.
Honesty, integrity, ethical conduct and professionalism in the workplace, together with compliance with the law by both the Company and each of its employees, are the foundations upon which EFE builds the trust of the public, its clients, suppliers and partners.
The Spanish News Agency EFE maintains an ongoing and productive partnership with the two leading institutions dedicated to promoting and strengthening the Spanish language: the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the Instituto Cervantes (IC). This collaboration seeks to safeguard the proper use of Spanish in the media.
Six years ago, the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the Spanish News Agency EFE relaunched the Fundéu foundation to promote better use of the Spanish language in Spanish-language media, particularly in Spain and the Americas. The foundation subsequently adopted the name FundéuRAE.
The Board of Trustees of FundéuRAE comprises the Director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, as Chairman; the President of the Spanish News Agency EFE, Miguel Ángel Oliver, as Vice-Chairman; Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez; and RAE members José María Merino, Soledad Puértolas, Carme Riera and Álex Grijelmo, the latter having been one of the driving forces behind the creation of Fundéu. Olivia Piquero, the current Director of FundéuRAE, is also the RAE’s Director of Communications.
Each year, the FundéuRAE Foundation also selects a Word of the Year that has attracted particular linguistic interest because of its origin, formation or use, as well as the prominent role it has played during the year and its impact in the media.
In 2025, the Word of the Year was arancel (“tariff”).
The Agency’s stylebook Nuevo libro del estilo urgente (New Guide to Urgent Style), of which a limited number of copies have been printed for distribution to universities, institutions, public bodies and Instituto Cervantes libraries around the world, among others, sets out the ethical, professional and linguistic standards governing the journalistic work of the Spanish News Agency EFE.
Beyond its value as an internal reference, the book makes these guidelines available to media professionals, teachers and communication students who share EFE’s fundamental principles: rigour, clarity and accuracy in reporting; contextualisation, verification and integrity; and, above all, the utmost respect for the people who are the subjects of the news and for the citizens for whom it is intended.
In keeping with its longstanding public-service mission, EFE made the digital version of the book available free of charge to everyone. It has been downloadable from the Agency’s corporate website since early 2024 and remains available there.
Co-published with the Instituto Cervantes and coordinated by EFE journalist Javier Lascuráin, the Nuevo libro del estilo urgente defines the standards governing journalistic work at EFE in three key areas:
(a) Ethical standards: how news is approached, including “our commitments to the accuracy of what we report”, and how information is handled;
(b) Professional practices: how headlines are written and how content is structured, from a straightforward news story to a video news report, photographic coverage and/or a feature report; and
(c) Language: everything relating to how language and words are used.
The guide was officially presented in January 2024, when the President of the Spanish News Agency EFE, Miguel Ángel Oliver, presided over the deposit of EFE’s legacy in the Instituto Cervantes’ Caja de las Letras (Vault of Letters). Among the items deposited was the aforementioned book, the latest in a long tradition of EFE style guides, a field in which the Agency was a pioneer.
The Instituto Cervantes’ vault, which preserves the secrets and symbolic legacies of writers and artists from the Spanish-speaking cultural world, also received, among other items, the style guides of the world’s leading Spanish-language news agency and some of the most iconic photographs in the history of Spain.
