Criminal law
Published on 17 September 2026
An arrest in Spain decides a great deal in the hours when the person arrested understands least about what is happening. If you are a visitor, or you live here without full command of the language, you have the additional problem of lacking the words to place your own situation.
This page explains what happens in Barcelona during the first 72 hours, and which decisions in that window genuinely belong to you.
Within the city of Barcelona the arrest is normally made either by the Guàrdia Urbana, the municipal police, or by the Mossos d'Esquadra, Catalonia's own police force, depending on the type of offence. Both have competence to arrest. In practice, arrests end up routed to the Mossos, who conduct the criminal investigation and deal with the court.
The Spanish national police and the Guardia Civil retain competences of their own, particularly for certain offences and outside the main urban areas. None of this changes your rights, which are the same throughout Spain. It does change the practicalities: a different station, different procedures, different points of contact.
The rights of a detained person are set out in article 520 of the Criminal Procedure Act, in the wording given by Organic Act 13/2015. The ones that matter most to you:
The right to an interpreter is not a courtesy. A statement you give in a language you only partly command sits in the case file exactly like any other.
Article 520.1 puts it plainly: detention may not last longer than strictly necessary for the enquiries needed to establish the facts and, in any event, within a maximum of seventy-two hours the detainee must be released or brought before the judicial authority. The record of the arrest must state the place and time of both.
Those 72 hours are a ceiling, not a standard duration. Many arrests end well before. What happens afterwards is for the investigating judge: release with or without conditions, reporting obligations, surrender of your passport, bail, or remand in custody. What follows is the investigation phase, at which point what being an investigado means becomes the next question.
If the person arrested does not name a lawyer, one is assigned through the duty roster of the Barcelona Bar Association, the ICAB. That service operates around the clock, and the colleague who attends is a member of the same Bar as any privately instructed lawyer. This is not a question of quality.
The difference is a practical one: you did not choose that person, and they do not necessarily speak your language. Which is exactly why it matters to know that the assignment is not final. The detainee or their family can instruct a lawyer of their own choosing at any moment, including after a statement has already been taken. There is no point at which that change stops being possible.
So if you are trying to help someone from outside, that is the thing you can actually do: instruct a lawyer and tell the station that they are taking over.
This is the part most often underestimated. What is said there goes into the file and stays with the case, even if it is later clarified or retracted.
Remaining silent is a right, and in many situations it is the sensible decision, particularly when nobody has yet seen the file. Whether to speak or stay silent cannot be answered in the abstract: it depends on what the police have and on what is attributed to you. A lawyer establishes both before the statement, not after it.
Improvising is the one option that never pays.
When a call reaches me, the first thing I establish is where and how far: which station, what allegation, whether a statement has already been taken. Then I take over the assistance and attend at the station and, if it gets that far, at the appearance before the investigating judge.
Before any statement I want to know what the police have, and I go through what that means with you in English before anything is recorded. Urgent matters have a fixed fee, quoted in advance. You can read how I work, or what I do in criminal defence in Barcelona.
Editorial responsibility: Carles Jiménez, attorney-at-law (Barcelona Bar No. 34.946). This note was prepared with the assistance of artificial-intelligence tools and reviewed and approved by the author before publication.
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