Raquel Fernández Megina has a degree in Journalism and has been the president of the Spanish NGO Nofumadores.org since 2005. Committed and passionate Raquel plays an advocacy role by empowering citizens to protect their right to a smoke-free environment and pressing policymakers to advance Tobacco Control measures with the ENDGME concept as the main goal and focusing on preventing the new generations from ever starting smoking.

She started to coordinate a small group of involucrate volunteers from every corner of Spain with, virtually, zero resources. Over the years, these people have contributed decisively to make sure that, at least, there is some accountability for Big Tobacco and Lawmakers not willing to advance or enforce Anti-Smoking laws in Spain. The proposals that Nofumadores.org brought to all parliamentary groups to include in their amendments to the tobacco bill proposal in 2010 were taken into account to the point that some of them were integrated into the law with the same wording as the association proposed.

Using the media as a key piece to get its message across to both politicians and citizens, Nofumadores.org has focused on raising awareness among citizens and demanding to policymakers the need to expand smoke-free outdoor spaces, eliminate points of sale, increase tobacco and nicotine taxes, the implementation of plain packaging, legal and fiscal harmonization of new products for tobacco and nicotine consumption with burnt tobacco, tobacco crops reconversion in Spain and also denouncing the environmental impact of tobacco, the relationship between the hospitality industry and the tobacco industry as well as the interference of the industry.

In 2022 Raquel received, in the name of Nofumadores.org, the World No Tobacco Day Award granted by the WHO for their work in exposing the interference of the industry in the Canarian island La Graciosa and for their campaign “Make All Spanish Beaches Smoke-Free“.

At present Raquel in her leading role at Nofumadores.org, continues to work and engage with Spanish lawmakers to advance the agenda, not only, toward a smoke-free future but also towards a tobacco and nicotine-free future, using the ENDGAME 2030 declaration as its main roadmap. To this end, he has also led the presentation to the European Commission of the citizen initiative “Call for a Tobacco-Free Environment and the First Tobacco-Free Generation in Europe by 2030”, which calls for the progressive abolition of the sale of tobacco for those born starting in 2010 which gathered signatures among European citizens during 2023.