Facing criminal proceedings is difficult anywhere and harder still in a foreign country, in a language you do not fully master, because what you say, and what you do not say, in the first hours can shape the whole procedure. Solving Legal is an independent law firm in Barcelona, in practice since 2013, with criminal defense as one of its core areas. I handle every matter personally, in English, from the police station to trial.

Most guidance written in English describes criminal procedure in Spain in general terms, but Barcelona has its own police force, a single courthouse complex for the whole city and court names that changed in 2025 and that many pages have not caught up with, all of which matters from day one.

This page offers general information rather than advice on your specific case, so for that please contact me.

What people call me about

Someone has been arrested

In Spain a detained person has the right to a lawyer from the very first moment, to be informed of the facts attributed to them, to remain silent and to an interpreter (article 520 of the Criminal Procedure Act). You do not have to accept the duty lawyer assigned at the police station, the abogado de oficio, because the detainee can appoint a lawyer of their own choice, an abogado de confianza, who may be one the family has called for that purpose, unless a court has ordered that the detainee be held incommunicado (article 527 of the Criminal Procedure Act). In Barcelona the arrest will normally be made by the Guàrdia Urbana or by the Mossos d'Esquadra, as explained below. Detention may last no longer than strictly necessary, and in any case no more than seventy-two hours, before release or appearance before a judge. If you call me, I take over the assistance and am present at the station and before the court, because the first statement is not something to improvise.

You have received a summons

A court summons, a citación, may call you as a witness or as an investigado, the person under investigation, roughly what other systems call a suspect at the pre-trial stage, and the difference decides your rights and how the appearance is prepared. In Barcelona almost all of it happens at the Ciutat de la Justícia, described below. Do not attend as investigado without speaking to a lawyer first, since preparing the statement, or deciding to remain silent, is part of the defense.

You are under investigation and nothing seems to move

This is the situation foreign residents ask me about most, and the one least written about. An investigation, the fase de instrucción, can run for months with no visible step, yet silence is not the same as being cleared. Meanwhile time limits run, evidence ages, and decisions taken early, or not taken, narrow what can be done later. It feels opaque from outside for a structural reason, namely that in Catalonia a lawyer cannot download the case file from any portal, so keeping track of a case means asking for it through the court agent, the procurador, and knowing when to ask.

The investigation concerns your company

If you direct or manage a Spanish company, or the local subsidiary of a foreign group, a criminal investigation can reach you personally and reach the company as a separate defendant. Spanish law allows a company itself to be criminally liable, and an adequate compliance model can operate as a defense for it. These matters are documentary, slow and technical, and they are decided on how management decisions can be reconstructed. This is the part of my practice that overlaps with white-collar crime.

What is specific to Barcelona

Catalonia has its own police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, which handles criminal investigations in Barcelona, and that is the first thing general guidance about Spain overlooks. Within the city an arrest may also be made by the municipal police, the Guàrdia Urbana, depending on the offense, but it ends up with the Mossos. The rights of a detained person are the same across Spain, but the station, the procedure for appointing a lawyer of your choice and the duty-lawyer roster are run through the Barcelona Bar Association, the ICAB, not through a national system.

The Ciutat de la Justícia de Barcelona i L'Hospitalet concentrates the investigating courts and much of the criminal jurisdiction of the city, so almost everything happens in one place. Knowing which court your file sits in, and what its practice is, decides how a hearing is arranged and how quickly a request is dealt with.

Since December 31, 2025, there have been no Juzgados de lo Penal, because on that date the first transitional provision of Organic Act 1/2025 turned the courts that had not yet been converted into sections of the single Tribunal de Instancia of each judicial district, so that their judges now sit in its Criminal Section, which article 14 of the Criminal Procedure Act has called the Sección de lo Penal since October 3, 2025. The court names changed in 2025 and many pages have not caught up, so if one still tells you your case will be heard by a Juzgado de lo Penal, it was written before December 31, 2025 and has not been updated.

Catalan is a working language of the courts, so documents, decisions and hearings may be in Catalan, and that is lawful. In practice it is a minority of the paperwork, but it does happen and is valid without translation. If you do not understand Catalan you are not left without a defense, because a party who would be left defenseless by not knowing the language may object to the court using it, while a suspect or accused person who does not understand the language of the proceedings is entitled to an interpreter and to a written translation of the essential documents (article 231 of the Organic Act on the Judiciary and article 123 of the Criminal Procedure Act).

For a foreign resident this matters in a very practical way, since a translation you obtain yourself is no substitute for understanding what the file actually says.

Why the language matters

Court interpreters translate your words but do not defend you, and nuance is where cases are won and lost, from what exactly you are being asked to what a plea deal (conformidad) really implies and which deadlines are running against you. A lawyer who explains all of this to you directly in English, with no intermediary, spares you one source of error at the stage where mistakes cost most.

I work in Spanish, Catalan, English and German and am used to matters with a cross-border component: foreign residents and visitors, companies with interests in Spain, and coordination with lawyers in other jurisdictions.

I prepare every matter with a verifiable method, checking each legal source against the official text and tracking each deadline, as I explain on the page about how I work.

English-speaking criminal lawyer in Barcelona