The Spanish Securities Commission published its annual supervisory update on suspicious transaction and order reports and related market abuse communications, showing that it received 218 notifications in 2025, 21% fewer than in the previous year, mainly because of fewer referrals from other competent authorities. Equity instruments accounted for 84% of all communications and almost 75% concerned the use or attempted use of inside information. The authority also pointed to better reporting practices, with good-quality submissions unchanged from 2024, fewer submissions rated as improvable, a marked rise in medium-quality reports, and a substantial improvement in submission timeliness. CNMV assesses report quality by looking at the precision of the description of the conduct, the plausibility of the suspected breach, the timing and logic of the orders, the investor profile, the connection to the source of inside information, and the materiality of the trading activity. It reminded firms, markets and branches in Spain that they must maintain proportionate systems and procedures for continuous monitoring, and noted that it has asked some active participants that had filed no suspicious transaction communications in the previous two years to confirm that such controls are in place. The authority also reiterated that annual testing of those arrangements should include at least an internal or external audit plus an internal review, and recommended both appropriate calibration of surveillance alerts and robust expert human analysis before deciding whether a STOR should be filed. For reporting delays, it noted that European Union authorities have agreed through ESMA that 60 calendar days is a general benchmark for what is usually considered reasonable, and that notifications submitted after that period were accompanied by an explanation.

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