It is a widely held perception in Spain that justice moves slowly, even among those with no regular contact with the legal world. And they are not wrong.<\/p>\n
At Navarro Llima Abogados<\/strong>, we live daily with the consequences of the backlog<\/strong> affecting the Spanish courts and tribunals, and with the heavy caseload they carry.<\/p>\n This situation obliges us to devise strategies that reduce, so far as possible, the impact that court delays may have on our clients, and to seek solutions that protect their interests effectively.<\/p>\n In 2025, a new Act came into force in Spain intended, among other objectives, to improve the efficiency of the system. One of its principal innovations was to make it compulsory, in the vast majority of proceedings, to negotiate with the opposing party<\/strong> before filing a claim.<\/p>\n The purpose behind the measure was a reasonable one: to encourage parties to reach agreements out of court, to reduce the number of new proceedings and, in doing so, to help ease the pressure on the judicial system.<\/p>\n Yet rather than preventing new proceedings from being brought, the measure has merely postponed them.<\/p>\n At the end of 2025, according to various sources drawing on a report by Spain’s General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), 4.67 million cases<\/strong> remained pending before the courts, 3.4% more than a year earlier.<\/p>\n Nor is that all: to this were added the difficulties inherent in rolling out a new system. During this first year, the absence of unifying criteria on the matter gave rise to considerable legal uncertainty<\/strong>, since the requirements for the attempt at prior negotiation to be properly regarded as fulfilled were not well understood. Added to this was the fact that, in practice, steps that one court might accept could be assessed differently by another, which only heightened that uncertainty.<\/p>\n As a result, and despite the reforms introduced, close to 5 million cases<\/strong> were still awaiting resolution at the end of 2025. The scale of that figure shows that the problem cannot be solved simply by adding new pre-action requirements; it calls for a broader response, backed by sufficient staff, resources and organisational capacity \u2014 creative solutions focused on what matters: resolving quickly the problem of the person who suffers it.<\/p>\n The most worrying consequence of this situation is not merely that a judgment takes longer to arrive. The real risk is that those who need to go to court end up choosing not to, because the time, the cost and the complexity of the proceedings turn the claim itself into a further problem.<\/p>\n Where proceedings drag on excessively and access to justice becomes ever more complex, the courts risk drifting away from the function they ought to perform: offering citizens an effective means of resolving their disputes and obtaining a legal answer within a reasonable time.<\/p>\n Faced with this reality, at Navarro Llima Abogados we work by devising strategies designed to prevent, so far as possible, the timescales of the justice system from determining the outcome of each matter.<\/p>\n The starting point is always the same: knowing the client well<\/strong> and understanding their situation in full. It is not enough to analyse what has happened from a strictly legal standpoint. It is also necessary to know what concerns them, how they perceive the dispute and, above all, what objective they are truly seeking to achieve.<\/p>\n And it is worth remembering that the vast majority of matters carry a strong personal or emotional element. To devise a suitable strategy, it is therefore essential to understand not only the client’s legal position, but also how they perceive the problem and the opposing party. At times, the most satisfactory solution is not necessarily the highest-value claim, nor the most forceful procedural option.<\/p>\n Once the matter has been examined and the various routes to the client’s principal objective identified, we set out clearly the advantages, the risks and the consequences of each of them, assessing the legal prospects, the cost, the time required and the practical viability of every option. From there, we recommend the strategy<\/strong> we consider most appropriate.<\/p>\nThe 2025 reform and mandatory pre-action negotiation<\/h2>\n
Proceedings are not avoided: they are simply postponed<\/h2>\n
The real risk: giving up on going to court<\/h2>\n
How we work in the face of court delays<\/h2>\n
Knowing the client and understanding their objective<\/h3>\n
Negotiation as the starting point<\/h3>\n