Practice area 01
Penalties, public-sector recruitment competitions, state liability and public employment, against town halls, the Balearic Government and any Spanish public body — in the administrative route and in judicial review.
Against a public body you are not arguing on equal terms. The authority issues a decision that is presumed valid and immediately enforceable, it sets the deadlines itself, and the burden of reacting in time falls on you. If you do not react, the decision becomes final and its merits stop being arguable at all.
That makes Spanish administrative law a field where procedure weighs as heavily as substance. Penalty proceedings with defective service, a time-barred infringement or a lapsed file can collapse entirely, without ever needing to argue about whether the underlying events happened.
The urgent thing is the deadline. If you have a recent notification in your hand, that document is dated and the clock is already running. Call +34 681 27 03 40 before doing anything else.
What this covers
01
Traffic fines, noise and licensed-activity penalties, tourism and holiday-rental penalties, coastal and environmental matters, and municipal penalties of every kind. Representations within the file, administrative appeal and, where appropriate, judicial review.
02
Compensation for loss caused by the operation of a public service: falls on the public highway, damage from municipal works, healthcare, and defective administrative action. General deadline of one year.
03
Access to public employment: local police, firefighters, health-service staff, teachers and administrative personnel, whether civil servants or on employment contracts. Challenges to the competition rules, exclusion from the list of admitted candidates, physical, medical and psychometric tests, the scoring of merits, review of examination papers and appeals against the board's marks. Also interim staffing pools: ordering, call-ups and exclusions.
04
Once inside the service: career progression and recognition of seniority and grade, administrative status, secondments, disciplinary matters and pay claims. And what to do when the authority simply never answers. This is the field of the cassation appeal the Supreme Court upheld for me in 2019 (STS 293/2019).
Representations within the file itself and, against the decision, an appeal to the same authority. In many cases this route must be exhausted before the courts can be approached — and it is where all the arguments should already be put on the record in writing.
Before the Administrative Courts of Palma or the Chamber of the High Court of the Balearic Islands, depending on subject matter and value. Claim, defence, evidence, judgment. A written procedure: your attendance is rarely needed.
Because the decision is enforceable from day one, the urgent step is often not winning the appeal but obtaining interim relief to stop the penalty being enforced, the fine collected or the building demolished in the meantime.
Against the first-instance judgment, where value and subject matter allow. Assessed on its merits: not every adverse judgment deserves an appeal, and saying so is part of the job.
Reported case
Reaching the Supreme Court by cassation requires the Court itself to find an objective point of general legal interest. Most appeals never clear that filter: they are dismissed without the merits ever being argued.
La Administración al Día INAP
Spanish Supreme Court
Career progression forms part of “working conditions”
The Court upholds the appeal and extends career progression to interim and temporary staff of the Balearic Government.
Appeal upheld
In March 2019 the Administrative Chamber of the Spanish Supreme Court upheld the cassation appeal I brought for four public employees of the Balearic Autonomous Community who had been excluded from the horizontal career-progression scheme because they were interim and temporary staff.
The Court set aside the judgment of the High Court of the Balearic Islands and held that career progression forms part of "working conditions" for the purposes of EU Directive 1999/70/EC, so excluding non-permanent staff from it lacked objective justification. My clients were granted the right to career progression and the corresponding back pay.
Reaching the Supreme Court by cassation requires the Court itself to find an objective point of general legal interest: most appeals never clear that filter and are dismissed without the merits ever being argued.
STS 293/2019, of 6 March 2019 Spanish Supreme Court · Administrative Chamber, Fourth Section · Cassation appeal 2595/2017 · against the judgment of the High Court of the Balearic Islands of 21 February 2017
Cited because it is a public, published judgment. Every case is different and turns on its own documents and circumstances: a favourable outcome in one case guarantees nothing in another.
Indicative deadlines
Swipe the table to see all of it.
| Step | Runs from | General deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Representations in penalty proceedings | Service of the notice of commencement | 15 days |
| Administrative appeal (alzada) | Day after service | 1 month |
| Optional appeal (reposición) | Day after service | 1 month |
| Judicial review | Exhaustion of the administrative route | 2 months |
| State liability claim | The event, or when damage appeared | 1 year |
| Extraordinary review | Depends on the ground relied on | 3 months / 4 years |
Indicative figures for the most common general deadlines. Shorter special deadlines exist in particular fields, and the calculation depends on how service was effected. No deadline should be taken as read without reviewing the file.
Further reading
Artículo
Plazos, dónde se presenta el recurso y cuándo merece la pena recurrir una multa de tráfico en Palma. Explicado paso a paso por una abogada.
LeerArtículo
Las sanciones por comercialización de estancias turísticas en Mallorca son de las más altas de España. Plazos, defectos frecuentes del expediente y qué se puede alegar.
LeerFAQ
These answers are general: every case turns on its own documents.
As a general rule, one month for an administrative appeal (recurso de alzada or recurso de reposición) from the day after service, and two months to bring judicial review proceedings against a decision that has already exhausted the administrative route. Shorter deadlines exist in particular fields, and the calculation depends on how and when the notification was served. It is the first thing I check, because everything else depends on it.
It matters a great deal, and not in your favour: the deadline runs from valid service, not from the day you understood the letter. Living abroad does not extend it, and neither does the letter being in Spanish or Catalan. Send me the document and I will tell you what deadline you are actually facing.
Yes — this is state liability (responsabilidad patrimonial). Where loss results from the normal or defective operation of a public service and you had no legal duty to bear it, compensation can be claimed. The general deadline is one year from the event or from when the damage became apparent, so it is not something to leave sitting.
It depends on what is being challenged and, above all, on when. The competition rules are the law of the process: if they are unlawful they must be challenged at the time, because once accepted they cannot be reopened later by way of an appeal against your exclusion. Against the board's own decisions — exclusion from the list of admitted candidates, the result of a physical or psychometric test, the scoring of merits, or an examination mark — there is a complaint to the board itself and, once that route is exhausted, judicial review.
What the courts will not do is re-mark your paper: that is the board's technical discretion. What they will review is whether the procedure was correct, whether reasons were given, whether the criteria were applied equally to everyone, and whether there was a material error. Which is, in practice, where these cases are won.
In practice, almost never. Judicial review is essentially a written procedure and I conduct it in full. Your attendance is only required in specific situations, and I would tell you well in advance.