How a civil lawsuit works in Spain after the 2025 reform

A civil lawsuit in Spain now begins before anyone files anything with a court. Since 3 April 2025, a claim is admitted only if the claimant can show a documented attempt to settle the dispute first. In the second half of 2025, the same statute converted the single-judge courts that had handled civil cases for decades into a new structure of district courts, the Tribunales de Instancia. Both changes come from Ley Orgánica 1/2025 (the statute that made an ADR attempt compulsory before issuing most civil claims and reorganised the first-instance courts). Much of what is written in English about litigation in Spain still describes the system as it stood before it.

The route itself remains recognisable. You try to settle, and you file a claim through a procurador with a lawyer's signature on it. The case then runs through one of three procedures, depending on what you claim and how much. A judge decides, the losing party usually pays the costs, and a judgment that goes unpaid is enforced against the debtor's assets. Each of those stages has its own rules and its own clock. They are taken below in order, with the law as it stands in 2026 and the latest official figures on how long each stage lasts.

How a civil lawsuit works in Spain, stage by stage

A civil case in Spain runs through six stages, and each has a gate that can stop it.

1. Settlement attempt. Before suing, the claimant must try to settle through one of the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms the law recognises, and keep proof of it.
2. Claim. A procurador files the claim form (demanda) electronically, signed by a lawyer, together with the documents it relies on and the proof of the ADR attempt.
3. Defence. The defendant has 10 days to answer in the simplified procedure and 20 in the ordinary one, counted in court working days.
4. Evidence and hearing. The court admits the evidence and hears it at a trial, or decides on the papers when the evidence is documentary and undisputed.
5. Judgment and appeal. The judgment can be appealed to the Audiencia Provincial (the appeal court of each province). In limited cases a further appeal lies to the Tribunal Supremo (Spain's highest court in all matters except constitutional ones).
6. Enforcement. If the losing party does not pay or comply, the winner applies for enforcement and the court traces and seizes assets.

The 2025 reform: new courts and a new first step

Ley Orgánica 1/2025 did two things that matter to anyone bringing or defending a civil claim. The first is the ADR requirement, in force since 3 April 2025 and explained in the next section. The second is the map of the courts.

Until 2025, each civil court was a Juzgado de Primera Instancia (a single-judge court of first instance): one judge, one registry and a number. A city with twenty of them had twenty separate shops on the same street. The reform turned the street into a single building with departments. Each judicial district now has one Tribunal de Instancia, organised in sections by subject (civil, commercial, criminal and others) and served by a shared court office. The law scheduled the conversion in three waves:

• 1 July 2025, for districts whose only courts combined first-instance and investigating functions;
• 1 October 2025, for districts with separate first-instance and investigating courts;
• 31 December 2025, for the rest, the large cities among them.

For a litigant, the visible effect is one of names and addresses. A claim today goes to the civil section of the Tribunal de Instancia of the relevant district. A document citing "Juzgado de Primera Instancia n.º 3" refers to a court that has since become part of a section.

The reform also touched costs, as explained further down, and it arrived on top of an earlier change. The monetary thresholds that decide which procedure a claim follows had already been raised by Real Decreto-ley 6/2023 (a government decree with the force of law that overhauled court procedure), in force since 20 March 2024. A guide to Spanish civil procedure written before 2024 gets both wrong.

Before you sue: compulsory ADR (MASC)

Spanish law calls the settlement routes medios adecuados de solución de controversias, or MASC. It is Spain's own label for what the rest of the world knows as ADR.

Think of the requirement as a turnstile at the courthouse door. The court office checks for your ticket, proof that you tried to settle, before any judge reads the claim. Article 5 of Ley Orgánica 1/2025 makes that attempt a condition of admissibility for almost every declaratory claim and special procedure under the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil (LEC, the code that governs civil procedure). The order-for-payment procedure is included. Article 403 LEC then allows a claim to be rejected when the proof is missing.

The ticket can take several forms:

• direct negotiation between the parties or their lawyers;
• a confidential binding offer;
• mediation;
• conciliation;
• the opinion of an independent expert.

Two conditions apply to all of them. The subject negotiated must match the subject later litigated. The attempt must also be recorded in a document, ideally one signed by both sides. Failing that, a document proving that the other party received the invitation and could read all of it will do.

Silence has a deadline. If the other side neither meets nor replies in writing within 30 calendar days of receiving the request, the process counts as ended and you may sue. You then have one year to file for the attempt to count. The year runs from receipt of the request if the other side never replied, or from the end of the talks if they took place. The request also interrupts the limitation period from the date the attempt to communicate is recorded.

Some proceedings bypass the turnstile altogether, and in those cases the claim can go straight to court. They include:

• enforcement claims;
• interim measures sought before a claim;
• preliminary discovery;
• bill-of-exchange proceedings (juicio cambiario);
• claims to protect fundamental rights;
• the European order for payment and the European small claims procedure.

Missing the step has two consequences. The first concerns admission, and it depends on what went wrong. Where the attempt happened but the paperwork is incomplete, several Audiencias Provinciales have allowed the defect to be remedied. Where there was no attempt at all, the prevailing reading treats the defect as fatal, and the claim has to be brought again once the step is done. The second consequence concerns money. A party that refuses, with no good reason, an ADR process it was actually invited to cannot recover its costs even if it wins. Our piece on the pre-action step for unpaid invoices covers how to document the attempt and how courts have treated defective ones.

Judges in England, legislators in Spain

Lawyers on both sides of the Channel share one instinct: they dislike being told to negotiate. The two systems differ in who did the telling.

In England it was the judges. For two decades they pressed parties towards ADR through costs sanctions for unreasonable refusals. In 2023, in Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil, the Court of Appeal confirmed that a judge may order the parties in front of them to try it. The Civil Procedure Rules followed in October 2024, and a scheme launched in May 2024 began sending small money claims to a compulsory one-hour mediation. The authority was exercised directly: a judge, looking at a particular dispute, told particular parties to talk.

In Spain the order came from Parliament. Ley Orgánica 1/2025 imposes ADR at one remove, as a general condition that applies to every claim alike, whatever the judge handling it thinks of the case. The objections came from the bar and the bench alike. In a 2026 survey by the Ilustre Colegio de la Abogacía de Madrid (ICAM, the Madrid bar association), 84% of the 1,164 lawyers who answered opposed making ADR compulsory. The judges' associations have been consistently critical of the reform. Boards of judges in cities such as Barcelona and Valencia adopted their own criteria simply to apply the requirement consistently.

The gap between the two judges runs deeper than the wig. In the common law, case law is a source of law, and judicial authority asserts itself through the law the judges themselves make. A Spanish judge is a career public servant. The Constitución (Spain's 1978 constitution) makes judges subject only to the rule of law, and under the Código Civil (the civil code) case law merely complements the legal order. An innovation that arrives by statute therefore lands on judges who must apply it as written and have little room to shape it. That is one more reason the Spanish bench received this one coolly.

Handled well, though, the requirement works for you. A carefully drafted proposal frames the dispute on your terms and interrupts limitation. It also exposes an unreasonable opponent to costs consequences later.

Its limits come from Spanish legal culture. When a decision really matters, the Spanish reflex is to look to whoever is in charge, and in a dispute the one in charge is the judge. Plenty of opponents treat the ADR stage as a formality before the real contest. England has its own share of litigants who only settle on the steps of the court. In Spain, though, the pull towards authority is the default setting, and litigation is where it pulls hardest. The sensible approach is to run the negotiation as seriously as you would run the claim, and to have the claim ready to file the day the talks end.

Abogado and procurador: two professions, one case

Spain and England both inherited a divided legal profession, and comparing them is the quickest way to understand the procurador.

The Siete Partidas, the thirteenth-century Castilian code, already distinguished two figures. The personero stood in for the party, and the vocero spoke for it. Their descendants are the procurador and the abogado. England drew its line in a different place. The solicitor, heir to the old attorney, advised the client and conducted the case. The barrister held the right to argue it in the higher courts. Both systems kept two professions, cut along different lines.

Over the centuries the Spanish abogado absorbed most of the work. Today the abogado advises, negotiates, drafts and signs every filing and argues in court, covering ground that England divides between solicitor and barrister. The procurador kept the formal side: representing the party on the record and handling the flow of documents to and from the court. England has been closing its own gap from the other end. Solicitors can now qualify for higher rights of audience, and many barristers accept instructions directly from the public.

One part of the English solicitor's traditional work belongs to neither Spanish profession. Authenticating documents and transactions falls to the notario, a public official whose signature gives a document full evidential force (fe pública). That covers everything from a property conveyance to the power of attorney that authorises a procurador to act.

In practice, the simplest way to picture the procurador is as your address inside the court. Under article 28 LEC, every summons, notification and judgment addressed to you is served on your procurador, with the same effect as if you had received it yourself. The clock for your next step starts from that moment. Procuradores also file documents and pass copies to the other side's procurador. Where the court delegates it, they carry out practical steps in enforcement too.

Both professionals are compulsory in most civil cases (articles 23 and 31 LEC). The exceptions are narrow:

• claims in the juicio verbal decided by amount, where the amount does not exceed €2,000;
• the initial application in an order-for-payment procedure (monitorio), whatever the amount;
• a handful of specific filings, such as entering an appearance or asking for urgent measures before a claim.

If the debtor opposes a monitorio worth more than €2,000, both become necessary from that point. Where their involvement was optional, their fees are generally left out of any costs order. The exceptions include reckless conduct by the losing party, a represented party domiciled in a different judicial district, and a consumer who sues after a prior out-of-court claim.

The procurador acts under a power of attorney, which can be granted in three ways:

• electronically, through the sede judicial electrónica (the courts' online registry);
• in person, before the Letrado de la Administración de Justicia (the senior court official who runs the court office);
• before a notario.

A power granted before a notary abroad will usually need an apostille or legalisation and a translation.

Money is where the two traditions differ most visibly. An English barrister's fees are set by the market. A procurador's are capped by Real Decreto 434/2024 (the regulation setting the procuradores' official tariff), which fixes three limits:

• the tariff operates as a maximum;
• the total for one matter across all instances cannot exceed €75,000;
• the client must receive a quote in advance.

Lawyers' fees in Spain are freely agreed, and firms that publish fixed prices remain the exception (we publish ours). The colegios de abogados (the bar associations, membership of which is compulsory to practise) have spent years trying to steer fees through published scales. The Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC, the competition authority) has fined several of them for it. Ley Orgánica 5/2024 del Derecho de Defensa (the 2024 statute on the right of defence) now allows them only indicative criteria for the assessment of costs. For anyone raised in Anglo-American business culture, the instinct behind those scales says a good deal about how Spain works: even the price of legal advice was expected to come from above.

Whether a dispute needs a lawyer at all, and whether it justifies one, is what our eight-question self-check is built to answer.

Three routes into court: monitorio, juicio verbal and juicio ordinario

Which procedure a claim follows depends first on its subject and then on its value. Some matters take a fixed route whatever the amount; the rest are sorted by how much is at stake.

Monitorio: the fast track for documented debts

The proceso monitorio (order-for-payment procedure) is available for a money debt of any amount that is quantified, due and payable. The debt must be backed by documents: a contract signed by the debtor, invoices, delivery notes, certificates or similar records of the parties' dealings (article 812 LEC).

The court office orders the debtor to pay, or to file a reasoned opposition, within 20 days. It works as a question the court puts to the debtor on your behalf: pay, or explain why not. What happens next depends on the answer:

• if the debtor stays silent, the procedure closes and enforcement follows;
• if the debtor opposes and the amount is €15,000 or less, the case continues as a juicio verbal;
• if the debtor opposes and the amount is higher, you must file an ordinary claim within one month, or the procedure is closed and you are ordered to pay the costs.

The monitorio requires the prior ADR attempt, and the payment order cannot be served by public notice (edictos). For creditors chasing unpaid invoices, our debt recovery guide follows the monitorio from the first demand to enforcement.

Juicio verbal: the simplified procedure

Claims worth up to €15,000 go through the juicio verbal. So do some matters whatever their value, such as evictions for unpaid rent and claims by a community of property owners for unpaid charges (article 250 LEC).

The defendant answers in writing within 10 days. Since the 2025 reform, the court then rules on the evidence and on whether a hearing is needed at all. When the only evidence is documents nobody has challenged, it gives judgment on the papers. Where a hearing is held and lawyers are involved, the judge may deliver the judgment orally at its close.

Juicio ordinario: the full procedure

Claims above €15,000 go through the juicio ordinario (article 249 LEC), as do claims whose value cannot be calculated. So do certain subjects whatever the amount, including:

• challenges to company resolutions;
• unfair competition;
• industrial and intellectual property;
• the protection of fundamental rights;
• most lease disputes other than recovery of rent or possession.

The defendant has 20 days to answer. A preliminary hearing (audiencia previa) then deals with procedural objections, pins down the facts in dispute and admits the evidence. A separate trial hears the witnesses and experts, and the judgment is due within 20 days of it.

Several of the business subjects in that list belong to the Sección de lo Mercantil (the commercial section of the court). That section has its own case law and its own evidential habits, and our commercial litigation page sets out how those cases are prepared. For defendants in either procedure, the 10 and 20 days to answer are the tightest limits in the whole case. That is why our civil litigation work treats them as running from the first consultation.

Language, translation and serving papers abroad

Spanish civil courts work in Spanish (castellano). Some regions have a second official language, such as Catalonia, Galicia or the Basque Country. There, parties may also use that language, and documents written in it are valid within the region with no translation (article 142 LEC).

Any document in another language must be filed with a translation (article 144 LEC). A private translation is enough to begin with. The other side may challenge it within five days, stating why it is inaccurate. The court then orders an official translation of the disputed part, paid for by whoever filed the document. If the official version proves substantially identical to the private one, the challenger bears that expense instead. Parties and witnesses who do not speak Spanish are heard through an interpreter.

Serving a claim on someone outside Spain follows its own track. Within the EU, service is governed by Regulation (EU) 2020/1784, applicable since 1 July 2022. Documents travel between designated transmitting and receiving agencies, or by registered post with acknowledgement of receipt. Electronic service is allowed only under strict conditions. The addressee may refuse a document written in neither a language they understand nor the official language of the place of service. For that reason, claims sent abroad are usually translated in advance.

Outside the EU, service runs through one of three channels:

• the central authorities designated under the 1965 Hague Service Convention, where the destination state is a party;
• a bilateral treaty;
• Ley 29/2015 de cooperación jurídica internacional en materia civil (Spain's statute on cross-border judicial assistance).

Service abroad takes longer than domestic service and belongs in the timetable from day one.

A prior question sits underneath all of this: whether Spanish courts have jurisdiction in the first place. When the defendant is in another EU country, the answer comes from the Brussels Ia Regulation, covered in our review of Brussels Ia on jurisdiction and enforcement.

How long does a lawsuit take in Spain?

The Consejo General del Poder Judicial (CGPJ, the governing body of the judiciary, which also compiles court statistics) publishes estimated average durations for the cases closed each year. Its 2025 figures, released in April 2026, give these national averages at first instance:

• juicio ordinario: 14.2 months;
• juicio verbal (general claims): 11.1 months;
• monitorio: 7.3 months.

An appeal adds more time:

• appeals to the Audiencias Provinciales against judgments in ordinary proceedings: 18.9 months on average;
• appeals against judgments in the juicio verbal: 13.1 months;
• cassation appeals before the civil chamber of the Tribunal Supremo: 32.2 months.

Enforcement files are the longest-lived of all, at 43.7 months.

Regional differences are wide. An ordinary case at first instance averaged 8.2 months in Navarre and 22.9 months in Murcia. The CGPJ itself warns that these figures come from a statistical model built on cases filed, resolved and pending. They are designed for comparing courts and years, not for forecasting an individual case. They remain the most reliable public picture available. A straightforward monitorio closes in months; a contested ordinary claim taken to appeal is measured in years.

Who pays: costs and court fees

Spain applies a loser-pays rule. At first instance, the party whose claims are rejected in full is ordered to pay the costs (article 394 LEC). The exception is a case the judge finds, and explains, raised serious doubts of fact or law. If a claim succeeds only in part, each side bears its own costs and the common ones are split.

Costs (costas) has a defined meaning (article 241 LEC). It covers:

• the other side's lawyer and procurador fees, where their intervention was compulsory;
• expert fees;
• the court fee, where one was paid;
• other listed items.

Recovery is capped. For each winning party, the loser pays no more than one third of the value of the claim towards the fees of the winner's lawyer and other professionals not paid under an official tariff, such as experts. Claims that cannot be valued count as €24,000 for this purpose, a figure raised by the 2025 reform. The cap falls away if the court declares the loser reckless (temeridad). Procurador fees follow their tariff and sit outside it.

On a €30,000 claim, for example, the loser's exposure to the winner's lawyer and expert fees combined stops at €10,000. Whatever the winner actually paid above that figure stays with the winner.

The ADR requirement feeds into costs at both ends. A party that refused an ADR process with no good reason loses its right to costs even if it wins. It can also be ordered to pay costs after only a partial defeat. At the other end, a party ordered to pay costs can ask for them to be waived or reduced in one situation: it had made a settlement proposal that the other side rejected, and the judgment ended up substantially the same as that proposal (articles 245 and 245 bis LEC). If you want to weigh what a claim could recover against what pursuing it costs, our one-minute scales tool puts both on the same balance.

Court fees (tasas judiciales) are paid only by companies and other legal persons; individuals have been exempt since 2015. The Tribunal Constitucional (the constitutional court, which sits outside the ordinary judiciary) struck down the variable element of the fee and the fees for civil appeals in judgment 140/2016. What remains in civil cases under Ley 10/2012 (the statute on court fees) is a fixed amount at first instance:

• €150 for a juicio verbal;
• €300 for a juicio ordinario;
• €100 for a monitorio, credited against the fee if an ordinary claim follows.

Monitorio applications and verbal money claims of up to €2,000 are exempt unless they rest on a document that is already enforceable. Legal persons granted legal aid are exempt too.

Appeals and enforcement

A first-instance judgment can be appealed (recurso de apelación) to the Audiencia Provincial within 20 days of notification. The one exception is the juicio verbal decided by amount where the amount does not exceed €3,000: that judgment is final (article 455 LEC). An appeal does not freeze a money judgment. The winner can ask for provisional enforcement while the appeal is pending, and no security is required for it (article 526 LEC).

A further appeal to the Tribunal Supremo (recurso de casación) is exceptional. Real Decreto-ley 5/2023, completed by Real Decreto-ley 6/2023, folded the separate extraordinary appeal for procedural infringement into cassation. Today a single appeal may raise the infringement of procedural or substantive rules. It must also show interés casacional, which exists in three situations:

• the judgment departs from the Tribunal Supremo's case law;
• the Audiencias Provinciales disagree on the point;
• the rule applied has no case law from the Tribunal Supremo yet.

The appeal is lodged within 20 days. If it fails entirely, the appellant pays the costs.

A judgment that orders payment and goes unpaid is enforced through a separate application (demanda ejecutiva), which needs no prior ADR attempt. Two time limits frame it:

• enforcement cannot be ordered in the 20 days after the judgment becomes final, a window left for voluntary payment (article 548 LEC);
• the right to enforce lapses five years after that date (article 518 LEC).

Once enforcement is under way, the court can ask banks, public registries and other bodies for information on the debtor's assets, at the creditor's request (article 590 LEC). It then attaches and realises them. When the assets sit in another EU country, a Spanish judgment is enforced there under Brussels Ia, with no exequatur procedure.

The system in one view

Litigation in Spain after 2025 rewards preparation at the front end. The ADR attempt decides whether the claim is admitted, bears on costs and interrupts limitation. It deserves the same care as the claim itself, and the claim should be ready to file the day the talks end.

From there, four things follow:

• the subject and value of the dispute choose the procedure;
• a procurador and a lawyer carry the case;
• the loser pays within a ceiling;
• the calendar runs in months at first instance, and in years once appeals and enforcement come in.

Frequently asked questions

How does a civil lawsuit work in Spain?

The claimant first attempts ADR through a recognised mechanism (MASC) and documents it. The claim is then filed through a procurador, signed by a lawyer. It follows the monitorio, the juicio verbal or the juicio ordinario depending on subject and amount. Appeal and enforcement follow their own rules and deadlines.

Do I need a lawyer and a procurador in Spain?

In most civil cases, yes: both are compulsory. The exceptions are juicio verbal claims of up to €2,000, the initial monitorio application of any amount, and a few specific filings. Our free Do I need a lawyer? tool gives a verdict after up to eight questions on standing, amount, deadlines and budget.

How long does a lawsuit take in Spain?

According to the CGPJ's 2025 estimates, first-instance civil cases averaged 14.2 months in the juicio ordinario, 11.1 months in the juicio verbal and 7.3 months in the monitorio. Appeals to the Audiencias Provinciales added 13.1 to 18.9 months, with wide regional differences.

Who pays legal costs in Spain if you lose?

The loser usually pays the winner's costs: lawyer, procurador and expert fees plus any court fee. Lawyer and expert fees are recoverable only up to one third of the value of the claim per winning party, unless the court finds the loser reckless. A party that refused ADR with no good reason loses its right to costs.

Can a foreign company sue in Spain?

Yes, where Spanish courts have jurisdiction, which for EU defendants is decided by the Brussels Ia Regulation. A foreign company follows the same procedure as a Spanish one. It needs a procurador with a power of attorney, a lawyer, translations of foreign-language documents and the prior ADR attempt. As a legal person, it pays the court fee unless an exemption applies.

What changed in Spanish civil procedure in 2025?

Ley Orgánica 1/2025 made a documented ADR attempt a condition for admitting most civil claims from 3 April 2025. It converted the single-judge courts into Tribunales de Instancia in three waves between July and December 2025. It also tied refusals to negotiate to costs, and raised to €24,000 the value used to cap recoverable fees on claims that cannot be valued.