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Both of these phrases are legal terms. “Mala in se” is Latin, and it translates as “bad in itself,” or “wrong in itself.” It’s referring to crimes that are a threat to life or limb, such as assault, battery, larceny or other offenses in the common law. Bingo or charitable events such as raffles are ordinary forms of gambling that states usually provide permission to participate in as long as the individual is over the age of eighteen. However, it is still important to check the local laws to prevent violations. Racetracks and Social Gambling.

The backbone of today’s gambling industry in Spain was established in 2011 when the country passed a cornerstone piece of regulation known as the Spanish Gambling Act 13/2011, enabling the country to introduce several gambling contests, across multiple verticals.

Spain quickly rolled out poker, bingo, and casino gaming, collectively known as iGaming, and betting such as sports and horse racing betting. Lotteries are another regulated aspect of the industry today, but we will draw our attention to the iGaming segment and how the country regulates it.

How Are Casinos Regulated in Spain?

Online casinos and casinos for that matter are regulated by a central gaming authority known as DGOJ or Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego if you are a stickler for details.

The regulator has been the main regulatory body in the country, issuing and suspending licenses as it sees fit, and should it suspect that a brand is non-compliant with established industry practices.

Today, the Spanish government has no issue with established brands that follow the legal framework laid out by DGOJ, but authorities often crackdown on unauthorized websites, which fail to meet mandatory consumer protection standards.

Spain’s iGaming growth has been heady over the years, with more than a million players participating in various gambling contests by the end of 2012. The numbers would later grow, of course, and today 84.9% of adults participate in gambling contests in Spain.

This makes for an impressive and sizeable chunk of Spain’s 50 million citizens. Gambling wasn’t always smooth sailing and the country. Interestingly, though, Spain didn’t introduce slots – better known as ‘tragaperras’ – until 2014, and the industry’s iGaming segment has been growing ever since.

Spain had had an uninterrupted growth across all gambling segments since 2011 when the Gambling Act was passed and promulgated. The country has seen an almost unchecked growth over the past decade, with all verticals benefiting from the growing interest in various gambling markets.

Can You Play in Online Casinos from Spain?

The short answer is yes. The only condition you must meet is being of the legal gambling age, which is 18. Spain has a remarkably low incidence of gambling addiction among its population, with only 0.3% of gamblers reporting or exhibiting problem gambling behavior.

This puts the country as one of the safest places to be if you enjoy online casinos. While players can be temperamental, the government has set fail-safes in places, making it difficult for opportunistic operators to take advantage of consumers.

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Online Casinos in Spain Pay Taxes Same as Every Other Business

Casinos in Spain are not exonerated from taxes in any way. If anything, they are expected to meet the same criteria as other businesses.

The current rate of taxation for online casinos in Spain is 25%, but this tax may be subject to revision as the government is now focusing on consumer protection more heavily.

While the tax rate is one of the stiffest in the European Union, operators have been happy to meet government requirements to gain access to what is one of the largest markets on the continent.

It’s good to know that current laws, licensed online casinos in Spain must use the country’s native domain extension, .es, or may be considered offshore or otherwise unauthorized websites.

Advertisement Is Being Scaled Down

While online casinos in Spain have gone fairly happy about their business, a new set of regulations is now looming. Early in 2020, Spain introduced a set of measures to limit the exposure of consumers to gambling advertisements.

Later, the country submitted a revised draft to the European Commission, offering to suspend advertisement, for the most part, allocating ad spaces in the wee hours of the day, and largely restricting operator’s ability to reach out their target audiences.

In many ways, Spain follows in the steps of Italy, another hardliner when it comes to gambling and casino gaming in Europe. The measure caused a stir at first, and Spain followed up by prohibiting sponsorships between sporting teams and brands, with all such partnerships now subject to termination by Q4, 2021.

Nevertheless, even with advertisement opportunities scaled-down, Spain remains a fantastic market that continues to attract new investment opportunities.

Final Word

Online casinos in Spain are a cherished segment of the gaming experience. While they weren’t originally popular, the ability to enjoy casino gaming products such as slots, craps, poker, and table games was quickly appreciated by Spaniards.

Revenue has been going strong in Q2, 2020, with Spain posting some impressive results. Both online casinos and poker grew posting 36.5% and 97.4% growth year-over-year, respectively. Online casinos, it seems, are quite popular, and even though advertisement spending has dropped in 2020, iGaming is going strong.

New Insights into the Causes of Addiction

Addiction involves craving for something intensely, loss of control over its use, and continuing involvement with it despite adverse consequences. Addiction changes the brain, first by subverting the way it registers pleasure and then by corrupting other normal drives such as learning and motivation. Although breaking an addiction is tough, it can be done.

What causes addiction?

The word “addiction” is derived from a Latin term for “enslaved by” or “bound to.” Anyone who has struggled to overcome an addiction—or has tried to help someone else to do so—understands why.

Disorders Such As Gambling Disorder

Addiction exerts a long and powerful influence on the brain that manifests in three distinct ways: craving for the object of addiction, loss of control over its use, and continuing involvement with it despite adverse consequences.

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For many years, experts believed that only alcohol and powerful drugs could cause addiction. Neuroimaging technologies and more recent research, however, have shown that certain pleasurable activities, such as gambling, shopping, and sex, can also co-opt the brain.

Although a standard U.S. diagnostic manual (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition or DSM-IV) describes multiple addictions, each tied to a specific substance or activity, consensus is emerging that these may represent multiple expressions of a common underlying brain process.

New insights into a common problem

Nobody starts out intending to develop an addiction, but many people get caught in its snare. Consider the latest government statistics:

• Nearly 23 million Americans—almost one in 10—are addicted to alcohol or other drugs.
• More than two-thirds of people with addiction abuse alcohol.
• The top three drugs causing addiction are marijuana, opioid (narcotic) pain relievers, and cocaine.

In the 1930s, when researchers first began to investigate what caused addictive behavior, they believed that people who developed addictions were somehow morally flawed or lacking in willpower. Overcoming addiction, they thought, involved punishing miscreants or, alternately, encouraging them to muster the will to break a habit.

The scientific consensus has changed since then. Today we recognize addiction as a chronic disease that changes both brain structure and function. Just as cardiovascular disease damages the heart and diabetes impairs the pancreas, addiction hijacks the brain. This happens as the brain goes through a series of changes, beginning with recognition of pleasure and ending with a drive toward compulsive behavior.

Pleasure principle

The brain registers all pleasures in the same way, whether they originate with a psychoactive drug, a monetary reward, a sexual encounter, or a satisfying meal. In the brain, pleasure has a distinct signature: the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, a cluster of nerve cells lying underneath the cerebral cortex (see illustration). Dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens is so consistently tied with pleasure that neuroscientists refer to the region as the brain’s pleasure center.

All drugs of abuse, from nicotine to heroin, cause a particularly powerful surge of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. The likelihood that the use of a drug or participation in a rewarding activity will lead to addiction is directly linked to the speed with which it promotes dopamine release, the intensity of that release, and the reliability of that release.

Even taking the same drug through different methods of administration can influence how likely it is to lead to addiction. Smoking a drug or injecting it intravenously, as opposed to swallowing it as a pill, for example, generally produces a faster, stronger dopamine signal and is more likely to lead to drug misuse.

Brain’s Reward Center

Addictive drugs provide a shortcut to the brain’s reward system by flooding the nucleus accumbens with dopamine. The hippocampus lays down memories of this rapid sense of satisfaction, and the amygdala creates a conditioned response to certain stimuli.

Learning process

Scientists once believed that the experience of pleasure alone was enough to prompt people to continue seeking an addictive substance or activity. But more recent research suggests that the situation is more complicated. Dopamine not only contributes to the experience of pleasure, but also plays a role in learning and memory—two key elements in the transition from liking something to becoming addicted to it.

According to the current theory about addiction, dopamine interacts with another neurotransmitter, glutamate, to take over the brain’s system of reward-related learning. This system has an important role in sustaining life because it links activities needed for human survival (such as eating and sex) with pleasure and reward.

The reward circuit in the brain includes areas involved with motivation and memory as well as with pleasure. Addictive substances and behaviors stimulate the same circuit—and then overload it.

Repeated exposure to an addictive substance or behavior causes nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain involved in planning and executing tasks) to communicate in a way that couples liking something with wanting it, in turn driving us to go after it. That is, this process motivates us to take action to seek out the source of pleasure.

Do you have addiction?

Determining whether you have addiction isn’t completely straightforward. And admitting it isn’t easy, largely because of the stigma and shame associated with addiction. But acknowledging the problem is the first step toward recovery.

A “yes” answer to any of the following three questions suggests you might have a problem with addiction and should—at the very least—consult a health care provider for further evaluation and guidance.

• Do you use more of the substance or engage in the behavior more often than in the past?
• Do you have withdrawal symptoms when you don’t have the substance or engage in the behavior?
• Have you ever lied to anyone about your use of the substance or extent of your behavior?

Development of tolerance

Over time, the brain adapts in a way that actually makes the sought-after substance or activity less pleasurable.

In nature, rewards usually come only with time and effort. Addictive drugs and behaviors provide a shortcut, flooding the brain with dopamine and other neurotransmitters. Our brains do not have an easy way to withstand the onslaught.

Addictive drugs, for example, can release two to 10 times the amount of dopamine that natural rewards do, and they do it more quickly and more reliably. In a person who becomes addicted, brain receptors become overwhelmed. The brain responds by producing less dopamine or eliminating dopamine receptors—an adaptation similar to turning the volume down on a loudspeaker when noise becomes too loud.

As a result of these adaptations, dopamine has less impact on the brain’s reward center. People who develop an addiction typically find that, in time, the desired substance no longer gives them as much pleasure. They have to take more of it to obtain the same dopamine “high” because their brains have adapted—an effect known as tolerance.

Compulsion takes over

At this point, compulsion takes over. The pleasure associated with an addictive drug or behavior subsides—and yet the memory of the desired effect and the need to recreate it (the wanting) persists. It’s as though the normal machinery of motivation is no longer functioning.

The learning process mentioned earlier also comes into play. The hippocampus and the amygdala store information about environmental cues associated with the desired substance, so that it can be located again. These memories help create a conditioned response—intense craving—whenever the person encounters those environmental cues.

Cravings contribute not only to addiction but to relapse after a hard-won sobriety. A person addicted to heroin may be in danger of relapse when he sees a hypodermic needle, for example, while another person might start to drink again after seeing a bottle of whiskey. Conditioned learning helps explain why people who develop an addiction risk relapse even after years of abstinence.

Recovery is possible

It is not enough to “just say no”—as the 1980s slogan suggested. Instead, you can protect (and heal) yourself from addiction by saying “yes” to other things. Cultivate diverse interests that provide meaning to your life. Understand that your problems usually are transient, and perhaps most importantly, acknowledge that life is not always supposed to be pleasurable.