Drug offencesEnglish-speaking drug offence lawyer in Spain

Personal use is not a crime. Supply is.

Spanish law separates substances that cause serious harm to health (cocaine, heroin) from those that do not (cannabis), with very different sentencing brackets. Possession for personal consumption is not a criminal offence; possession with intent to supply is, and it carries prison.

Everything therefore turns on the indicators the prosecution relies on: the quantity compared with your habitual consumption, whether it was divided into doses, the presence of scales or cash, messages on your phone, and any prior police surveillance.

Lines of defence

• Lawfulness of the stop and search, and of any house search and its judicial authorisation.
• Chain of custody of the seized substance and the reliability of the purity and net weight analysis.
• Personal consumption, especially where dependency is documented.
• Mitigation: addiction, cooperation, rehabilitation.

From arrest to trial

We attend the police station, review the case file and prepare the defence before you say anything on the record. See also criminal defence in Alicante.

Quantity is where the case is fought

Spanish case law has established indicative thresholds for personal consumption, calculated from average consumption over a five-day period. Below those figures, possession is in principle not punishable. Above them, an intention to supply is presumed, but that presumption can be rebutted and frequently is.

What actually tips a case is the surrounding evidence: whether the substance was divided into individual doses, whether scales or cash were found, the messages on your phone, and whether the police had you under prior surveillance. Without those elements, even a quantity above the threshold can be explained by personal consumption, particularly where dependency is medically documented.

How the drugs were found matters as much as what was found

A large part of these cases is decided before the substance is ever analysed: on the lawfulness of the search. A body search requires sufficient grounds. A vehicle search has its own rules. A house search demands a reasoned judicial warrant, and the standard is strict.

Where the search was irregular, the evidence is void, and so is everything derived from it. That is the first thing we examine in any file, before discussing the facts at all.

Sentences and what can be done about them

Sentences vary sharply depending on whether the substance causes serious harm to health, and they increase where the quantity is of notable importance, where an organisation is involved, or where the offence took place near schools.

Where conviction is unavoidable, the objective becomes the lightest available outcome: a negotiated plea, the mitigating factor of addiction, or suspension of the sentence conditional on completing treatment. For foreign nationals, avoiding a custodial sentence also avoids the immigration consequences that follow it.

See also: pre-trial detention and prison.