Administrative fines in Barcelona: a guide to responding to a penalty

Traffic and mobility

These are the most numerous, and in Barcelona they are not limited to speeding. The Zona de Baixes Emissions (Low Emission Zone) generates a high volume of penalties for driving without an environmental badge within the restricted area and hours. To these are added those captured by red-light and bus-lane cameras, parking penalties, and those affecting personal mobility vehicles: riding on the pavement, wearing headphones or carrying a passenger on an e-scooter. The full regime for personal mobility vehicles is set out in the guide to the Barcelona electric scooter by-law.

Community relations and public behaviour

These come from the Ordenança de mesures per a fomentar i garantir la convivència ciutadana a l'espai públic de Barcelona (Barcelona by-law on community relations in public spaces) and from the environmental and waste by-laws. They cover noise in homes and premises, drinking alcohol in the street, graffiti, improper occupation of public space and incorrect waste management, including putting rubbish out outside the set hours or faulty separation of waste in commercial premises.

Business activities and the self-employed

Where the person under investigation is a company or a professional, the amount rises and ancillary measures appear that can bring the business to a halt. The usual situations are carrying on an activity without the required licence or prior notification, breaching the conditions of the licence granted (the typical case being terraces with more tables or more space than authorised), tax penalties and those arising from a labour inspection.

Housing and planning

Barcelona City Council carries out intensive inspection work on the tourist use of homes without the corresponding authorisation, on works without a licence and on breaches of the duty to maintain buildings. These are the files with the highest amounts and the ones most often carrying orders to stop or to reinstate. Where the file concerns a property that is also being bought or sold, it is worth also reading the guide to buying and selling property in Barcelona, because a planning breach that is not time-barred passes with the property.

1. Read the whole notice

   The notice contains the information that governs everything else: the date and place of the events, identification of the person alleged to be responsible, the provision breached, the classification, the amount, the investigating body, the body competent to decide and, at the end, the appeal notice, which states which appeal is available, to whom and within what time. It is worth keeping the envelope or the electronic receipt too: the date of service is the starting point for the count.

2. File representations within the proceedings

   This is the first defence document and it is filed within the time limit stated in the notice itself. In it, the facts are denied or qualified, documents are provided and evidence is put forward: the photograph from the camera, the periodic verification certificate for the measuring device, the report of the officer bringing the charge, the calibration sheet for the sound level meter. A generic document downloaded from the internet is usually dismissed out of hand; what sustains a submission is the specific fact and the specific rule.

3. Follow the investigation and the proposed decision

   The authority must rule on the evidence put forward and, if it rejects it, give reasons. Refusing relevant evidence without reasons causes prejudice to the defence and is a ground of nullity that is relied on later. At this stage there is a hearing before the decision is taken.

4. Lodge the administrative appeal

   Against the penalty decision there is a recurso de reposición to the same body, or a recurso de alzada to the superior body, depending on who decided and on whether the act exhausts the administrative route. The general time limit is one month from the day after service. This is where procedural defects and lack of reasons are argued, as well as the substance.

5. Go to the contentious-administrative route

   Once the administrative route is exhausted, what remains is an appeal to the Juzgados de lo Contencioso-Administrativo in Barcelona, within two months of service of the decision that exhausts that route. This is the stage at which an impartial third party reviews what the authority has done, and with large penalties or ones carrying ancillary measures it is often the only real means of defence.

Throughout, an application can be made for suspension of enforcement of the penalty. It is not granted automatically: it has to be shown that enforcement would cause harm that is impossible or difficult to put right, and the amount often has to be secured.