Getting a prescription online in Spain: what the law allows

The consolidated medicines act, approved by Real Decreto Legislativo 1/2015, states it in article 3, paragraph 5: «Se prohíbe la venta, por correspondencia y por procedimientos telemáticos, de medicamentos y productos sanitarios sujetos a prescripción.» Distance selling of prescription-only medicines is prohibited.

The decree that regulates distance selling carries the limit in its own title: Real Decreto 870/2013 governs the sale of medicines «no sujetos a prescripción médica», those not requiring a prescription. There is no second rule opening that door for the ones that do.

The ban addresses the seller, not the patient. It is a statement about who may sell what, which is why it can be checked: an authorised pharmacy appears in a public register, and that register cannot list prescription medicines because the law does not allow it to.

The electronic prescription is the ordinary route in the Spanish national health system, governed by Real Decreto 1718/2010 and working across regions through the interoperable prescription system. The patient carries no paper: the prescription is attached to their health card.

The practical consequence is that the first half of the journey can be remote and the second cannot. A doctor may prescribe, the prescription may be electronic, and the medicine is handed over in a pharmacy you walk into.

Spain has no separate rule governing remote consultation, unlike France, where teleconsultation companies need a state approval. What can be checked here is the individual: the state register of health professionals lets you search a doctor by name.

The medicines agency runs DISTAFARMA, the site that gathers the regional lists of pharmacies authorised to sell at a distance. If a site sells non-prescription medicines legally, its pharmacy is listed there. If it is not listed, it is not legal, however well built the site looks.

The second sign is the common EU logo, required on every page offering medicines by article 8.3.c of Real Decreto 870/2013. It is a rectangle carrying the national flag, and it has to be a live link to the official list.

A logo that is only an image, or that links to a page belonging to the seller, is exactly what it appears to be. The check is to click it and see where it lands.

That it offers to do something the law forbids the seller to do. You do not have to judge its intentions or the quality of its questionnaire: the offer itself falls outside article 3.5.

This says nothing about you as a buyer, or about the medicine in the abstract. It says who is on the other side, and that is the most useful thing available before a card number is typed in.

The legal route exists and is not especially inconvenient: a consultation, an electronic prescription, a pharmacy. It is slower than a three-question form, and that slowness is the part where somebody checks that the medicine suits you.