local councils and public administrations
The law asks you to hide different things depending on what you're publishing. Ocultia comes with both cases already built in, applies the masking formula set by the AEPD (Spain's data protection authority), and erases the text underneath — all inside the staff member's own computer.
MAYORAL DECREE No. 417/2026
Having considered the claim filed by Ms. María Serrano Ibáñez, DNI **.*45.67*-*, residing at C/ del Horno 22, 3.º B, against the 2025 tax assessment, this Mayor's Office resolves to partially uphold the claim.
An appeal for reconsideration may be lodged against this decision within one month of its publication.
Publication of an administrative act. The person must remain identifiable, so the name is published and the document is what gets masked.
the problem
Council meeting minutes go up on the portal with the name and DNI of the resident who spoke during the public Q&A. A sanctioning decree gets published with the licence plate and address of the person the case concerns. A public notice goes up with the full data because “that's how it's always been done”.
And the problem isn't just what's visible, it's what's still underneath. A black rectangle drawn over a PDF leaves the original text sitting in the text layer: it can be selected, copied and recovered in full. The Word file's metadata keeps the author, revisions and comments that nobody checked before publishing.
what almost nobody explains properly
The seventh additional provision of the LOPDGDD (Spain's data protection law) sets out how to identify a person when a public body publishes something that affects them. It distinguishes two situations that are resolved in opposite ways: in one, the document is masked and the name is left visible; in the other, the name is masked and the whole document is left visible. Confusing the two is the most common mistake, because instinct says everything should be hidden.
Resolutions, decrees, contract awards, lists of accepted applicants, grant awards. When you publish the decision.
Public notices, failed notifications, announcements in official gazettes. When you publish because you couldn't notify the person directly.
Neither mode anonymizes anything. The rule wants the person to remain identifiable, so the document you publish still contains personal data. The one thing the provision bans in every case is leaving both the full name and the complete ID number visible at once: if you're about to do that, Ocultia warns you before you download — it doesn't stop you. The decision belongs to whoever signs off on the publication.
the formula
The masking leaves no room for judgment calls: the digits in positions four through seven of the document are published, and everything else is hidden, including the check letter.
Nobody picked those positions for convenience. They came out of a random draw on 27 February 2019 — ball number 4 — as part of joint guidance published by the AEPD (Spain's data protection authority), the APDCAT, the AVPD and Andalusia's Council for Transparency and Data Protection. They were drawn at random precisely so no public body could choose them.
Ocultia applies the rule character by character, keeps dots and dashes intact, and covers the edge cases: a NIE has seven digits plus a leading letter that doesn't count; a passport with fewer than seven digits reveals the last four.
try it with any document
**.*45.67*-*
The digits in positions four through seven are published. Everything else is hidden, including the check letter.
What you just typed never left your browser: the calculation happens right here. With a whole document, Ocultia works the same way.
which documents
The public Q&A, resident interventions, roll-call votes. Names and DNIs of third parties who never asked to appear on the portal.
Sanctions, planning enforcement, mayoral resolutions. Name, ID number, licence plate and address of the person the case concerns.
Summons published when a notification attempt fails. The case where the name is masked and the document isn't.
Tender specifications, evaluation committees and technical and professional ability. CVs of the assigned team carry DNIs, dates of birth and personal email addresses.
Lists of beneficiaries and named awards. Often data that reveals someone's social or health situation.
Copies handed over under transparency rules or to parties concerned, with third-party data genuinely masked.
the difference that matters
Ocultia runs entirely in the staff member's browser. The PDF is never uploaded to any server — not a vendor's, not ours. Once the app has loaded, you can disconnect from the network and check it yourself.
If the document never travels to a third party for processing, that link in the processing chain disappears — along with everything it takes to document it.
No copy of the file sits on someone else's disk, and no log records which document each employee opened.
On-premise deployment inside your intranet, air-gapped if you need it. Not a single byte leaves the perimeter.
how it works
Drag in the PDF, Word or ODT file. It's never sent anywhere — it opens on your computer.
Administrative act, notification by public notice, or full masking to hand over a copy.
See every piece of data highlighted by type. Add, remove or fix any detection before applying it.
A copy with the formatting intact, the text underneath deleted, and the metadata cleaned.
frequently asked questions
Four: the ones in positions four through seven of the number. Everything else is hidden, including the check letter. For a DNI 12345678Z, ***4567** gets published. The positions were set by a random draw on 27 February 2019, in joint guidance from the AEPD (Spain's data protection authority) and the regional data protection authorities.
No. That's the one thing the seventh additional provision of the LOPDGDD (Spain's data protection law) bans in every case. You have to hide one of the two: the ID document if you're publishing an administrative act, or the name if you're notifying by public notice.
The two publication cases, no: they keep the person identifiable by design — that's exactly what the rule is for. The resulting document still contains personal data and is still subject to the GDPR. If you need to hand over a copy with everything masked, that's what the blocks mode is for.
It's removed from the document's text layer. A black bar drawn on top leaves the original text selectable and copyable underneath. Ocultia deletes the underlying content and also cleans the file's metadata.
In notification by public notice, if the person concerned has no ID document, you uncheck their name in the detections table so it gets published. Without a name or a document, the notice wouldn't do its job of letting the person recognize themselves.
No. All processing happens in the browser on the workstation. For internal deployments there's an on-premise version that runs inside your network with no internet access.
shall we talk?
Tell us which documents you publish on your portal and which document management system you use. We'll handle the analysis, the setup and training your team.
Includes a free 7-day demo with the full feature.
Let's talk