This has nothing to do with US vs EU or any other trope you seek to my comment as being on a particular side of of a particular issue in order to get people of a certain bent to support whatever your side is (isn't team politics great).
Ask yourself this. If the license Spain is trying to enforce here had the exact same requirements but was granted by some 3rd party (industry consortium or whatever) and the government didn't care whether they held it would you still be acting like it's such a big deal for them to have it or not?
Does holding the license or not fundamentally change the nature of the business the license holder is in?
The government is essentially granting legitimacy to a bad thing here in exchange for some money being spent in the right directions and enough of it on "good things" that it's plausibly deniable.