Criminal law
Published on September 24th, 2026
A theft charge is often a visitor's first contact with Spanish criminal justice, and it can go from the store to the courtroom on the same day. The paper the police hand over uses Spanish legal categories that do not match what the English words suggest, and the one written on it largely decides whether the realistic outcome is a fine or prison.
Spanish law separates hurto from robo, and the line is not where most English speakers expect it. Hurto, which I will call theft, is taking someone else's movable property without their consent in order to profit from it (article 234 of the Spanish Criminal Code). It becomes robo, robbery, when force is used on things to get into or out of the place where they are kept, or when violence or intimidation is used against a person, including to get away or against someone who comes to help (article 237). The qualifying force is listed in the Code and covers climbing in, breaking doors or locked furniture, and false keys (article 238), which is closer to what American law calls burglary.
Robbery with force carries one to three years in prison (article 240.1), rising to two to five years in an inhabited home or a place open to the public (article 241.1). Robbery with violence or intimidation carries two to five years (article 242.1), and the court may go one degree lower when the violence was minor (article 242.4). None of these provisions sets a minimum value, so ten euros taken by force is still robbery.
For theft, above €400 the penalty is six to eighteen months in prison (article 234.1). At or below €400 it is a fine of one to three months (article 234.2), a light penalty under the Code, which makes the case a delito leve, a minor offense (articles 13.3 and 33.4). It is roughly a misdemeanor, but still a criminal conviction. Spanish fines are counted in days, with a daily amount between €2 and €400 that the judge sets according to your financial situation (article 50).
The €400 line stops protecting you when one of the aggravating circumstances in article 235 applies, since the theft is then punished with one to three years in prison whatever the value. Since April 10th, 2026, one of those circumstances is that the item taken is a cell phone or another device capable of holding personal data, unless it was for sale or on display in a store (article 235.1.10). Picking up a €150 phone from a café table is now aggravated theft, where before that date it would usually have been a minor offense.
Organic Act 1/2026 of April 8th, on repeat offending, rewrote article 234.2. Until then, someone with three prior convictions for offenses of the same kind in that part of the Code, even minor ones, only faced the prison range if their combined value exceeded €400. That condition is gone, and three prior final convictions for offenses of the same kind, at least one of them minor, are now enough to turn a €30 theft into a case carrying six to eighteen months, leaving aside records that have been expunged or should have been. The aggravated form for repeat offenders now requires three prior convictions for more serious offenses (article 235.1.7), while minor convictions still do not count for general recidivism or against suspending a sentence, unless they form part of these aggravated types (articles 22.8 and 80.2.1). The same Act lets local councils bring criminal proceedings for theft (article 105.3 of the Criminal Procedure Act), and for events before April 10th, 2026 the earlier wording applies unless the new one favors the accused (article 2.2 of the Criminal Code and the Act's transitional provision).
When the theft is minor and the person is caught in the act, typically by store security, the police summon everyone straight to the duty court, the juzgado de guardia, warning that the trial can be held there and then even if someone fails to appear and that each side must bring its own evidence (article 962 of the Criminal Procedure Act). If the duty court cannot hear it, the trial is set within seven days at most (article 965.1.1), before the investigating section of the Tribunal de Instancia, which replaced the old investigating courts in October 2025 (article 14.1). A lawyer is not mandatory for a minor theft, although you are entitled to one (article 967.1), and the judgment can be appealed within five days of notification (article 976.1).
Above €400, with an aggravating circumstance, as a repeat offense, or when the charge is robbery, the case is no longer minor. Where there is a police report, the person was arrested or summoned to the duty court, and the offense was caught in the act, the case runs as a juicio rápido, the fast-track procedure (article 795.1). There you can accept the charges at the duty court itself, what Spanish law calls conformidad, in exchange for a one-third reduction of the sentence requested, provided the offense carries up to three years and the reduced sentence does not exceed two (article 801). That door is open for theft and for basic robbery with force, but in principle not for violent robbery, and cases outside the fast-track conditions follow the abbreviated procedure.
Someone living outside the court's district does not have to attend a minor-offense trial and can send the judge a written statement or authorize a lawyer or a procurador, the court agent who represents parties, to present their arguments and evidence (article 970). In return, the unjustified absence of someone properly summoned does not stop the trial (article 971), so you can be convicted without ever having been in the room. For offenses that are not minor, the accused must give an address in Spain, or name a person, to receive notifications (article 775.1), and a summons served there allows a trial in absence when the prison sentence sought does not exceed two years, among other conditions (article 787.1). The guide to being summoned to court in Barcelona explains what a summons tells you and what it leaves out.
The first thing I look at is how the charge is classified and what value the complaint puts on the item, because those two facts decide whether we are talking about a fine or prison. Then I check the prior record, since a minor conviction is expunged six months after the sentence is served if there is no new offense (article 136.1) and one that should have been expunged cannot be used for repeat offending, and I place the date of the events against April 10th, 2026. After that we decide together whether to contest the facts at trial or accept the charges, and if you live outside Spain I organize the defense so you do not have to fly back for every step. I do this directly, in English, with every source checked against the official text. Read more on criminal defense in Barcelona and on my criminal law practice.
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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