The recurso contencioso-administrativo is the court appeal you file in Spain to challenge a decision, regulation, or failure to act by a public administration. It is governed by Law 29/1998 (the Ley de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-Administrativa, or LJCA), and the standard window to file is two months from the day after you are notified of the decision you want to challenge.1Boletín Oficial del Estado. Ley 29/1998 – Ley de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-administrativa Miss that window and the decision becomes final, so the first thing to confirm is the date on the notification and the type of act you are up against.
What You Can Take to Court
The LJCA lets you challenge three different kinds of government conduct. Explicit decisions, such as a denied permit, a fine, or a tax assessment, are the most common. General regulations below the rank of a formal parliamentary law can also be challenged directly. And when an agency sits on your application past its legal deadline without responding, the law treats that silence as a response you can bring to court.1Boletín Oficial del Estado. Ley 29/1998 – Ley de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-administrativa
Not every administrative act qualifies. The act must either end the administrative route or be a procedural step that effectively decides the substance of your case, blocks you from continuing, or causes irreparable harm to your rights. You also need standing: a direct legal right or a legitimate interest affected by the government’s action.
There is a separate pathway in Article 29 for material inactivity, which is different from silence on a request. When the administration has a concrete legal duty to deliver a specific service or benefit to an identified person and simply does nothing, you first file a formal claim with the agency demanding compliance. If three months pass without the obligation being met or an agreement reached, you can bring the recurso contencioso-administrativo against the inactivity. If the agency has already issued a final decision in your favor and then fails to execute it, you request execution, and if another month passes without action, you go to court through the summary procedure.
Exhaust the Administrative Route First
In most cases you cannot go to court until you have taken the dispute as far as it can go inside the agency itself. This is called agotamiento de la vía administrativa. Usually it means filing a recurso de alzada to the next level of authority within the agency and receiving a final decision, or waiting out the agency long enough for silence to apply.
Some decisions already end the administrative route on their own: acts of the Council of Ministers, certain decisions by ministers where no higher internal appeal exists, and resolutions the governing statute labels as final. Skip the required internal appeal when one does apply, and the judge will reject your case on procedural grounds without ever reaching the merits.
Filing Deadlines
Deadlines are rigid. Missing one almost always means losing the right to challenge the decision at all.
- Explicit decisions: two months from the day after you receive official notification of the final administrative act.1Boletín Oficial del Estado. Ley 29/1998 – Ley de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-administrativa
- Administrative silence that counts as denial: six months from the day silence is legally presumed to occur, which is the day after the agency’s legal deadline to respond expires.
- Regulations: two months from the day after publication in the official gazette.
- Fundamental rights procedure: ten days from notification.1Boletín Oficial del Estado. Ley 29/1998 – Ley de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-administrativa
Month-based deadlines run date to date on the calendar, not by business days. A notification received on March 15 produces an expiry on May 15. Shorter deadlines measured in days, like the ten-day fundamental rights window, do exclude Saturdays, Sundays, and official holidays.
Silence works differently depending on who started the procedure. When you filed a request and the agency fails to respond on time, the default is that silence counts as approval. But silence counts as a denial in several important categories: appeals against existing administrative acts, requests involving public property or services, and procedures that could harm the environment. The six-month filing clock applies to the denial scenarios.
The fundamental rights track exists for cases where a government action violates a constitutionally protected right. The procedure is drastically compressed at every stage and takes priority over other cases on the docket, which can produce a judgment in roughly two months rather than the year or more an ordinary case takes.
Lawyer and Procurador
You always need a lawyer (abogado) for a contencioso-administrativo case, no matter which court hears it. Whether you also need a procurador (court agent) depends on the level of the court.1Boletín Oficial del Estado. Ley 29/1998 – Ley de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-administrativa
- Single-judge courts (Juzgados de lo Contencioso-Administrativo): a procurador is optional. Your lawyer can handle representation directly and receive notifications.
- Collegial courts (Tribunales Superiores de Justicia, Audiencia Nacional, Tribunal Supremo): both a lawyer and a procurador are mandatory.
If you qualify for legal aid (justicia gratuita), both professionals are appointed free of charge.
What You File to Start the Case
The first document is the escrito de interposición. It is a short notice telling the court you intend to challenge a specific administrative act. It identifies you, the act, and the issuing body, with the reference number from the administrative file. It is not the full legal argument yet.
Attach proof that you exhausted the administrative route, a copy of the decision you are challenging (or documentation showing the agency never responded), and a power of attorney for your lawyer or procurador. That power of attorney, the apoderamiento apud acta, can be done electronically through Spain’s judicial electronic services portal.2Sede Judicial Electrónica. Apud Acta Power of Attorney For a company, you also need a corporate resolution authorizing the action and proof the signatory can bind the entity.
Legal professionals submit filings through LexNet, the mandatory electronic system for judicial communications.3Abogacía Española. Lexnet Justice
How the Ordinary Procedure Moves
Once the court accepts the initial filing, it requests the full administrative file (expediente administrativo) from the agency, which has twenty days to deliver it. The court then passes the file to you, and you have twenty days to draft and submit the demanda, your full legal complaint.1Boletín Oficial del Estado. Ley 29/1998 – Ley de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-administrativa The demanda lays out why the act was unlawful, any procedural errors, and the remedy you want: annulment, recognition of a right, compensation, or an order that the agency do something.
The government’s legal team then gets an equivalent period to file its defense (contestación a la demanda). From there the case goes one of two ways. If the facts are undisputed and the dispute is purely legal, the judge may move directly to a written conclusions phase and then to judgment. If facts are contested, the judge opens an evidence phase.
Either side must request the evidence phase in its main written filing. The court opens it when there is genuine disagreement about facts that matter to the outcome, and in cases involving fines or disciplinary sanctions the court must open it whenever facts are in dispute. The evidence period lasts up to thirty days and follows standard civil procedure, so witness testimony, expert reports, and documents are all admissible. The judge can also order evidence on their own initiative.
After evidence and final conclusions, the court issues judgment. It can uphold the act, annul it, recognize a right the administration denied, or order the agency to perform a specific action. Realistic timelines vary by court and region.4Poder Judicial. Estimación de los Tiempos Medios de Duración de los Procedimientos Judiciales Twelve to twenty-four months from filing to judgment is common for ordinary proceedings, and complex cases or backlogged courts can run longer.
The Summary Procedure for Smaller Cases
Cases valued at less than 30,000 euros follow the procedimiento abreviado, as do cases involving government personnel matters, immigration, and sports doping regardless of their value.1Boletín Oficial del Estado. Ley 29/1998 – Ley de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-administrativa The two-step filing of the ordinary track disappears; you file the full demanda right from the start.
The court then schedules an oral hearing where both sides present arguments and evidence live before the judge. If both sides agree the case can be decided on the papers, the court can skip the hearing, with twenty days for the government to respond in writing. The oral format makes this track noticeably faster than the ordinary written one.
Stopping Harm While the Case Runs
Filing the appeal does not automatically suspend the government’s decision. A fine, demolition order, or license revocation stays in force while the case proceeds. If waiting for judgment would make the appeal pointless, you can request precautionary measures at any stage.5Noticias Jurídicas. Ley 29/1998 de 13 de Julio, Reguladora de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-administrativa – Título VI
The test is whether enforcing the decision now would deprive the appeal of its legitimate purpose. A building demolished before the court rules on whether the demolition order was lawful is the classic example. The judge weighs that risk against potential harm to the public interest or third parties from suspending the act. If the court grants interim relief, it may require you to post a bond, and the measure does not take effect until you post it. Interim measures last until final judgment or until the case ends for another reason.
What You Pay
Neither individuals nor companies pay court filing fees to bring a contencioso-administrativo case; the previous judicial fees in this jurisdiction were struck down by the Constitutional Court in STC 140/2016.6Boletín Oficial del Estado. Pleno Sentencia 140/2016 de 21 de Julio de 20167Ministerio de Hacienda. Memoria Abreviada del Análisis de Impacto Normativo del Proyecto de Orden por la que se Modifica la Orden HAP/2662/2012
The real financial exposure is the losing-party-pays rule for attorney fees and other litigation costs (costas procesales). At first instance, the court imposes costs on the party whose claims are entirely rejected, unless the judge finds the case presented serious doubts of fact or law. In mixed outcomes, each side bears its own costs and shared expenses are split, unless one side acted in bad faith.1Boletín Oficial del Estado. Ley 29/1998 – Ley de la Jurisdicción Contencioso-administrativa
There is a statutory cap at first instance: the losing party cannot be ordered to pay more than one-third of the amount in dispute per prevailing party. For cases with indeterminate value, the law sets a reference figure of 18,000 euros for calculating this cap, though the court can adjust it for particularly complex matters.
If You Lose: Appeals
A first-instance judgment is not necessarily the end. Three further routes exist, each with its own gatekeeping.
Recurso de Apelación
Judgments from single-judge courts can be appealed to the corresponding collegial court within fifteen days of notification. The appeal document must contain the full legal reasoning, not just a notice of intent. If the fifteen days pass without filing, the court clerk declares the judgment final.
Recurso de Casación
Reaching the Supreme Court now requires showing that the case has “objective cassational interest for the formation of jurisprudence.”8Poder Judicial. Recurso de Casación en el Orden Contencioso-Administrativo This is not a fresh look at the facts. The Supreme Court takes cases that raise legal questions of broad importance: conflicting interpretations among lower courts, novel issues, or departures from established precedent. The previous 600,000-euro monetary threshold was replaced in 2016 with this qualitative filter.
Recurso de Amparo
If the case involves a fundamental right and you have exhausted the ordinary judicial route, you can seek protection from the Constitutional Court within thirty days of notification of the final judicial decision.9Tribunal Constitucional. 26 Core Issues About the Constitutional Remedy of Amparo The Constitutional Court looks only at whether a fundamental right was violated, not at whether the lower court read administrative law correctly.