Couldn't agree more with this. The fact that the cookie law is forced on websites is absolutely idiotic. The browsers know what cookies are being set.
You can search for more sanctions here: http://www.agpd.es/portalwebAGPD/resoluciones/procedimientos... Search for "Articulo 22.2 LSSI" or similar
This accounts for the seeming uptick in cookie notices. To my knowledge, Google has not enforced this in the past.
My solution was to use CloudFlare to get geotags and PHP to serve the warning to only to those who live in the EU, but to each his own.