Legislation: Spain: Codes & Legislation

Citations in Spanish texts are often combination of article number and recognised abbreviation of the title of the code.

Finding your way round a Spanish statute

1. At the head of the statute is the name of the department from which the statute originated (e.g. Comunitat Valenciana; Ministerio de Hacienda y Economía).
2. Title. This includes the statute's official number and defines what type of legislation it is. There is no equivalent to the concise title of an English act, so legislation is cited by its official number, which is a sequential number and the year in which the statute was enacted, written in the format: nnn/aaaa (if the legislation is an orden the official number is preceded by three letters indicating the department which created the legislation). May indicate broad subject matter of the legislation.
3. The body of the statute. If it's a law, it will be divided into títulos, and capítulos. A ley orgánica may be divided into libros, then subdivided into títulos and capítulos.
4. If there is a final article, it may deal with any particular commencement details and list legislation which has been amended by this act

Abbreviation of type of legislation, unique numerical identifier/yyyy, date of month, title eg L 1/2000, de 7 de enero, de Enjuiciamiento Civil.

Followed by either citation to the official publication the Boletín Official (abbreviated to BOE) eg BOE núm. 7, de 8 de enero del 2000, pg. 575-728

or citation to

the private publication Repertorio Aranzadi Cronológico de Legislación (abbreviated to RCL) eg RCL 2000 34. (This refers to the Marginale at which the act is, it encompasses pp.122-296)

If you only have the BOE citation you can still find the act easily in RCL (without recourse to the indexes) as the BOE citation is printed on top of each page in the RCL.

Printed resources

The LawBod subscribed to legislation published by a private publishing house. However, the only official text for current legislation is that published in the Boletín oficial del estado 

The LawBod has a considerable run of historic Spanish legislation - please click on blue tab History (above) if you wish to learn more.

Noticias Juridicas is a legal news website from Wolters Kluwer which aggregates legal news from Spain. It summarises court decisions as well as offering more in-depth articles, and has a search function for jurisprudence and legislation.