We use cookies to provide you with a better service and deliver a better browsing experience, as well as to enable us to tailor advertising to your browsing habits. We are responsible for the installation of the cookies that we use and for what we do with the data we collect, whether they are first-party or third-party cookies.
The following table provides links to make it easier for you to access the parts of this policy that are of interest to you. However, we recommend that you read the whole policy:
What are cookies and what else is stored on the browser?
Are they safe?
Technical and preference cookies have more benefits than risks
Statistical cookies also do not present a significant risk
First-party cookies do not tend to pose a significant risk either
What technical cookies do we use and why?
What preference cookies do we use and why?
What statistical cookies do we use and why?
What marketing cookies do we use and why?
What else is stored on the browser and why?
How do I manage or disable cookies?
Modifications to this Cookie Policy
What are cookies and what other things are stored in the browser?
Cookies are small text files that are stored on your browser when you visit our website. These files contain information about your browsing and interaction with our website, for the purpose of making your user experience more fluid and to enable us to show you advertising that is relevant to your browsing habits. Some cookies are essential to the proper functioning of the website, such as technical cookies or those for customising the user interface, while others, such as analysis cookies and behavioural advertising (or marketing) cookies, require that we inform you and obtain your consent before they can be used.
LocalStorage and sessionStorage are two data storage spaces located on your device’s browser and, like cookies, they can be first-party (when they are created by our website) or third-party (when they are created by our service providers or partners). The difference between the two spaces is that localStorage stores information indefinitely or until you decide to clear the browser data, while sessionStorage only stores information while the tab where our website is being used is open, and the information is deleted once it is closed. These two spaces allow more information to be stored than cookies without affecting the performance of our website.
You can find more information here.
Lastly, we would like to inform you that, although the purpose of the third-party cookies that we use, and for which we are responsible, is that outlined in the tables in the following sections, such third parties may use the data collected by their cookies for other purposes for which they are solely responsible. With regard to third-party cookies, our responsibility is limited to the downloading of cookies onto your device (which we do for the stated purposes). You can learn more about the objectives of these third parties, and whether or not they share data with third countries, in their corresponding policies (follow the links in the table).
In general, the level of risk associated with cookies depends on the type and whether they are first or third party. Most cookies are not dangerous. Specifically:
The Article 29 Working Party (formerly WP29 and now the European Data Protection Board) in its Opinion 4/2012, on “Cookie Consent Exemption”, believes that they do not pose a risk to you and exempts from the requirement to obtain consent prior to use all cookies that:
are necessary for communications transmitted through a network between the user and the servers that host the website;
are necessary to provide a specific functionality that is explicitly requested by the user.
This exemption from the obligation to justify the legality of their use on the basis of your consent, since they do not present a risk to you, is echoed in the cookie guides published by most EU countries’ data protection agencies (for example, in the case of the Spanish agency, it is set out in section 4.1 of the guide on the use of cookies, from July 2020).
WP29 went so far as to define the purposes it explicitly considers to bring more benefits than risks for you.
Cookie purposes explicitly excluded from informed consent
With regard to their purpose, the WP29 explicitly excludes the following cookies from the obligation to obtain the informed consent of the user:
- “User-input” cookies, which are often used to track user actions when completing online forms in an http session, or to remember the shopping basket that the user has selected on an online store;
- Session cookies that are used for user authentication or identification, which store a type of token (to prove that the user is who they say they are and has already been authenticated) so that the user is not required to enter their username and password on every page with restricted access that requests them.