SPAIN Law and Practice Contributed by: Alfonso López-Ibor, Pablo Henriquez de Luna, Virginia Jover and Pedro Echeguren, Lopez-Ibor DPM
2.3 Third-Party Funding for Plaintiff and Defendant Funding by third parties is available for both the plaintiff and defendant. 2.4 Minimum and Maximum Amounts of Third-Party Funding Pending future regulation, there is no limit regarding the amounts that could be funded by third parties. 2.5 Types of Costs Considered Under Third-Party Funding Third-party funding could cover procedural costs (lawyers and court agents’ fees), court fees, and potentially the other parties’ fees in the event of dismissal, subject to the agreement entered into between the funded and funding parties. 2.6 Contingency Fees Contingency fees are allowed in Spain since the Supreme Court confirmed their validity by a judgment rendered on 4 November 2008. Therefore, they may be freely agreed between the parties. 2.7 Time Limit for Obtaining Third-Party Funding Due to the lack of regulation, there is no time limit when it comes to the obtention of the fund- ing by third parties.
the plaintiff is required to have previously voted against the challenged decision. It must be noted that the bill referred to in 1.2. Court System , if approved, would introduce in some cases the obligation of a preliminary attempt at out-of-court settlement as a prereq- uisite to filing a lawsuit. Given that the bill is cur- rently under debate and will likely be subject to amendments and revisions, a study of its provi- sions will not be necessary until the final version of the text is made public. 3.2 Statutes of Limitations Under Spanish law, there are two types of stat- ute of limitations applicable to civil actions. Both are found in the Spanish Civil Code (SCC) and the Commercial Code, and their nature and application have been developed by case law. The first type of statute of limitations ( prescrip- ción ) may be interrupted by means of a judicial or non-judicial claim or an acknowledgment by the defendant of the existence of the obligation. There are different durations for the period of this first statute of limitations, depending on the action to be brought. • For actions based on in rem rights ( derechos reales ) over immovable property, the period for the statute limitation is generally 30 years, whereas the period for actions over movable property is generally six years after posses- sion was lost. • Actions based on mortgages last for 20 years. • The statute for actions brought to protect per- sonal rights is five years. This statute is also applicable to actions arising from contractual obligations.
3. Initiating a Lawsuit 3.1 Rules on Pre-action Conduct
As of today, no pre-action conducts are imposed as a prerequisite for initiating a lawsuit. How- ever, in some special lawsuits, such as in the challenging of corporate decisions (general shareholders meetings and board of directors),
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