The issue is in essence whether individuals have the right to oblige search engines to erase or block search results that point to personal information. The Court making the referral is the Audiencia Nacional. Some 130 cases are pending before it, in which Google is appealing injunctions issued by the Spanish Data Protection Authority against the search engine. The specific case considered in the referral relates to an official notice of foreclosure, derived from an outstanding debt with the Social Security, which appeared in La Vanguardia (a Catalan newspaper) in January 19, 1998. The debt was later on paid by the debtor and the foreclosure never took place. However, if you type the name of the concerned person on Google, the first result links to the page of the newspaper’s archive showing that old notice of foreclosure.

(i) Whether the functions of a search engine fall under the notion of “processing of personal data“ and “data controller”.

(ii) Whether the Directive allows the data subject to prevent search engines from indexing personal information of her, on the basis that she doesn’t want this information to be known by Internet users.

As prof. Peguera says “The referral is certainly timely and interesting, not just for Spain but for all Member States.” Huťko can not agree more.