Since January 2025, Presvet has become a regulatory obligation for all veterinarians in Spain. This platform, created to digitally record antibiotic prescriptions and combat antimicrobial resistance, has sparked a wave of protests within the sector. The reason? An excessive bureaucratic burden that undermines operational efficiency, quality of care, and even the financial viability of many clinics.
A system that penalizes efficiency
Royal Decree 666/2023 mandates that every antibiotic prescription must be registered in Presvet within 15 days. On the surface, it may seem reasonable. But in practice, this regulation has introduced duplicated tasks, recurring technical failures, and a rigidity that completely ignores the clinical realities of everyday practice. From incompatibilities with veterinary management software to unintuitive interfaces, professionals are losing valuable time to bureaucracy that adds no value for patients or clients.
The impact is especially severe in small clinics, where the veterinarian often has to take on administrative tasks without support staff. The result is an operational burden that erodes clinical care, increases costs, often passed on to clients, and creates tension in the relationship with pet owners.
Regulatory disconnect vs. clinical judgment
Presvet has also exposed a dangerous disconnect between regulatory decisions and professional judgment. Requirements such as mandatory microchipping for prescriptions, or the stepwise antibiotic protocol that delays critical treatments, illustrate how poorly designed bureaucracy can put animal lives at risk. Instead of trusting clinical experience, the system imposes rigid rules that slow down and hinder veterinary medicine.
What now? From protest to proposal
Faced with this situation, the sector has responded decisively: strikes, demonstrations, and concrete proposals. Among the most prominent demands are allowing in-clinic dispensing of medication, as is already standard in many European countries, to avoid delays and ensure continuity of care, relaxing mandatory identification and prescribing protocols, adapting them to real-world cases (such as rescued animals or emergency infections), and reviewing the sanction framework, which currently includes disproportionate fines that create fear and legal uncertainty.
Presvet as an opportunity to innovate
Paradoxically, this crisis has also opened the door to accelerate smart digitalization in the sector. Artificial intelligence is beginning to play a key role, automating repetitive tasks and giving veterinarians back their most valuable resource: time.
At Select Your Vet, we believe this is the right direction. Technology must serve animal health and the professionals who practice it, not become an obstacle. That’s why we invest in simple integrations, useful automations, and user-centered digitalization, whether for vets or pet owners.
Conclusion: transforming the crisis with clear thinking
Presvet has made it clear that imposing systems without listening does not work. But it has also unified the veterinary community in defense of its profession and could become the catalyst for positive transformation. With dialogue, common sense, and well-applied technology, it is possible to build a system that protects public health without suffocating those who make it possible.