{"id":35274,"date":"2026-08-31T11:40:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/?p=35274"},"modified":"2026-08-31T11:40:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:40:17","slug":"evidence-in-the-new-summary-proceedings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/evidence-in-the-new-summary-proceedings\/","title":{"rendered":"Evidence in the New Summary Proceedings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With the entry into force of <strong>Organic Law 1\/2025<\/strong>, of 2 January, on <strong>measures to improve the efficiency of the public justice service<\/strong>, several changes have been introduced to summary proceedings (juicio verbal), governed by articles 437 to 447 of the Spanish Civil Procedure Act (LEC) \u2014 most notably, <strong>changes <\/strong>to how evidence is submitted and processed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Before the reform<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Once the claim and the defence have been filed, a hearing could be scheduled if either party requested one, or if the court considered it necessary. The hearing then proceeded as follows:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>At the outset, the court identified the disputed facts \u2014 the points on which the parties disagreed \u2014 and evidence was then proposed. Beforehand, when the court set the hearing date, the parties were asked to formally request the summoning of any party, witness, or expert who could not appear on their own initiative. However, these summonses did not amount to admission of the evidence itself: that decision was only made at the hearing.<\/li>\n<li>Once evidence was proposed and admitted, either party could appeal the ruling if they disagreed with what had (or hadn&#8217;t) been admitted, and the accepted evidence was then presented.<\/li>\n<li>After all evidence had been presented, the case was submitted for judgment. Unlike ordinary proceedings, summary proceedings had no formal closing-arguments stage \u2014 whether to allow one was left entirely to the court&#8217;s discretion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>What has changed<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Once the defence is filed, the court now grants a five-day period for parties to propose and submit evidence, and to raise any procedural objections to the defence.<\/li>\n<li>Once both parties have proposed their evidence, the court issues a ruling admitting or rejecting each party&#8217;s requests.<\/li>\n<li>That ruling can be challenged through an appeal for reconsideration and\/or a formal objection.<\/li>\n<li>No further evidence can be proposed at the hearing itself, since the five-day window after the defence is filed is a strict deadline.<\/li>\n<li>At the hearing, the court identifies the disputed facts and proceeds directly to present all admitted evidence.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Pros and cons of the new rules<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>The clearest advantage is that courts will no longer issue summonses for evidence that is later never actually presented \u2014 something that used to happen regularly.<\/li>\n<li>Now, a summons is only issued once the underlying evidence has been proposed and admitted.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">That said, we see several <strong>drawbacks<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ol style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Evidence is now admitted before the disputed facts have even been defined, which risks courts admitting more evidence than necessary.<\/li>\n<li>Procedural objections and evidence admission are now handled in writing, sacrificing the oral, face-to-face nature that has traditionally defined these proceedings.<\/li>\n<li>What used to function as a preliminary hearing at the start of the trial is now conducted on paper \u2014 which could well slow down case processing rather than speed it up.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Overall, <strong>the legislature has stripped away much of the orality and immediacy<\/strong> that traditionally characterized Spanish judicial proceedings \u2014 a shift that risks slowing down case processing, reducing efficiency, weakening procedural safeguards, and increasing the workload on courts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This could have implications for the fundamental right to effective judicial protection and to public proceedings free of undue delay, as guaranteed under Article 24 of the Spanish Constitution. As these changes are still very recent, though, their real-world impact remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At <strong>addwill<\/strong>, our expert legal team is on hand if you&#8217;d like to discuss any of this further.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Author:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Olga Moreno<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Manager, Litigation Department, addwill<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; With the entry into force of Organic Law 1\/2025, of 2 January, on measures to improve the efficiency of the public justice service,  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procesal-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35284,"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35274\/revisions\/35284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addwill.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}