No, Spain’s environment minister didn’t take a private jet to a climate conference

Issued on: 17/07/2023 – 16:37Modified: 17/07/2023 – 18:43

4 min

If you only have a minute:

• A viral video supposedly shows the Spanish environment minister travelling by private jet from Madrid to Valladolid for a climate summit on July 10. Then, she hopped on a bicycle to travel from her hotel to the conference location. 

• However, the flight that some social media users said she took actually took off after the minister arrived in Valladolid. Thus, she couldn’t have been aboard the plane. 

• According to the Spanish environment ministry, Teresa Ribera travelled to the conference by car. The rest of the delegation travelled by train.

The fact-check, in detail:

“[This makes] no sense,” wrote pro-Kremlin Russian journalist Vladimir Soloviev in a July 11 post featuring a video showing Teresa Ribera, the Spanish minister in charge of ecological transition – essentially, a minister for the environment – riding her bike to a climate conference. However, Soloviev claimed that the minister actually travelled by private jet from Madrid to Valladolid, where the meeting was held, before hopping on a bike to go the last small distance in front of the cameras. The video has garnered more than 280,000 views on Telegram.

The story went viral in many different languages. There have been an estimated 27 million views of posts in English featuring the video, shared on July 11. A post in French featuring the video has garnered more than 300,000 views (since Juy 11), where it has garnered at least 140,000 views..

“The Spanish Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, went to a climate summit in a private jet, but then did several kilometres on bike accompanied by two cars. What hypocrisy!” reads this post, in French. 

Some social media users have been sharing screengrabs of a video supposedly showing the flight that they say the minister took from Madrid to Valladolid to go the conference. Furthermore, they claim that the flight emitted “2.45 tons of CO2” during its flight.

Teresa Ribera went to an informal meeting by car

The Spanish environment minister did participate in informal meetings with other European environment ministers on July 10 and 11 in Valladolid, Spain. 

Social media users have pointed to the site Falcon Despega, which tracks flights taken by the Spanish government, who use a type of plane called a falcon. Falcon Despega apparently reported that there was a Spanish Falcon flight from Madrid to Valladolid on July 10. 

However, if you look at the site, you’ll see that the plane took off at 10:57am, and landed at 11:38am. 

That doesn’t gel with what we know about Ribera’s movements. Spain’s environment ministry posted a photo of Teresa Ribera on a bike in Valladolid at 10:37 on July 10 – a full 20 minutes before the flight that people have claimed she took even took off from Madrid. 

Moreover, the ministry has also said that Ribera participated in a meeting starting at 10am – an hour before the Falcon in question even took off from Madrid. 

And there’s something else – it turns out that another flight-tracking site, FlightAware – this one more reliable – determined that the flight identified by Falcon Despega didn’t stop at any point in Valladolid. However, it did make three low-altitude passes in Villanubla, a town near Valladolid. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that this plane definitely didn’t drop the minister off in Valladolid.  

Teresa Ribera tweeted on July 9 that she was on her way to Valladolid. And, if you look on flight-tracking site Flightradar24, you’ll see that no government airplanes landed in Valladolid that day.

“Stop these fake stories, Teresa Ribera didn’t travel by plane – commercial or institutional – to Valladolid,” the environment ministry fumed in a tweet shared on July 11.

The ministry told Spanish fact-checking outlet Newtral that Ribera travelled by car from Madrid to Valladolid on Sunday, July 9. The next day, she took a bike from her hotel to the conference centre. The ministry also told another Spanish fact-checking outlet, Maldita.es, that the rest of the delegation travelled to the conference by train. 

Newtral also reached out to the Spanish Air Force, who said that the Falcon mentioned in these viral posts was actually completing training exercises that day and therefore had no passengers.