Costa Blanca South
Playa Flamenca, La Zenia, Cabo Roig and Villamartín belong to Orihuela. That single fact catches out almost everyone.
Arrest attendance, defence and private prosecution before the Investigation Section of the Tribunal de Instancia of Orihuela. We work in English throughout.
In brief. English-speaking criminal defence lawyer for Orihuela Costa, La Zenia and Cabo Roig: 24h arrest attendance, community fund fraud and private prosecution in Orihuela.
At a glance
Orihuela Costa is not a municipality. It is the coastal strip of the municipality of Orihuela, whose town centre lies some twenty-five kilometres inland. La Zenia, Playa Flamenca, Cabo Roig, Villamartín, Punta Prima and Los Dolses are all part of it.
The consequence is procedural and it costs people real money. Your criminal case is investigated and tried in Orihuela, not in Torrevieja, even though Torrevieja is closer, has the bigger English-speaking community and is where most residents assume everything happens. We regularly meet people who lost weeks because correspondence went to the wrong place, or who instructed a lawyer on the assumption of a different court.
Since 1 July 2025, under Organic Law 1/2025, the former investigating and criminal courts have become Sections of the Tribunal de Instancia of Orihuela. Rights and deadlines are unchanged; only the name on the paperwork is different.
Most of our clients here are British or Irish, and arrive with assumptions formed by a different system. Four of them are worth correcting immediately.
A judge runs the investigation, not the police or the prosecution. That judge orders expert evidence, requires banks to disclose records and rules on precautionary measures. The investigation phase, long before any trial, is where the case is decided.
A victim can be a party. Spanish law lets the injured party appear as a private prosecution, with their own lawyer, propose evidence and claim their own compensation. There is no equivalent at home, and it is the right most foreign victims never exercise.
Compensation is decided inside the criminal case, so there is normally no separate civil claim afterwards.
Silence carries no penalty. Declining to answer is ordinary and draws no adverse inference. Going in alone to clear up a misunderstanding, without a lawyer and without having seen the file, is how most people damage their own position.
Areas
We attend police stations from the outset and appear at the Tribunal de Instancia of Orihuela. Detention may not exceed the time strictly necessary, nor seventy-two hours.
The characteristic case of this coast. Large urbanisations, a majority of non-resident owners, weak oversight and misappropriation that surfaces years after it began.
Undisclosed charges, deposits diverted from developments, resale of properties with irregular status and agents who disappear with reservation payments.
Bookings for properties that do not exist or are let twice over. Individual sums are small, which is why most victims never report and why the schemes keep running.
Fake trading platforms aimed at retired residents with accessible savings. Reporting quickly determines whether the money can still be traced.
Properties standing empty for much of the year. Squatting and breaking into a dwelling are separate offences with very different remedies and timescales.
Checks on the N-332 and the urbanisation approaches. Refusing the test is a distinct offence, often treated more seriously than the reading itself.
Incidents in commercial centres and bars, typically resting on two conflicting accounts and a medical report, with witnesses who leave the country within weeks.
Residents whose accounts received transfers after answering a job advertisement. A defence matter, and an urgent one.
What the courts have held
On saying nothing until your lawyer has read the file. Spanish constitutional case law is unusually clear here. A detained person must receive sufficient information about the reasons for the arrest and be given access to the elements of the proceedings essential to assessing whether that arrest was lawful, and that access must be guaranteed before the first questioning (STC 21/2018, 5 March, First Chamber, amparo 3766-2016, ECLI:ES:TC:2018:21). The court had reached the same conclusion about access to a copy of the police report (STC 13/2017, 30 January, amparo 7301-2014, ECLI:ES:TC:2017:13) and has confirmed the doctrine since (STC 86/2025, 7 April, amparo 120-2023, ECLI:ES:TC:2025:86).
On service charge funds that go missing. The characteristic case of this coast has a precise legal shape: money received for a stated purpose and applied to another. The Supreme Court has upheld a conviction on those facts and clarified how the offence relates to neighbouring provisions when the elements of misappropriation are made out (STS 354/2022, 6 April, Criminal Chamber, cassation 905/2020, ROJ: STS 1451/2022, ECLI:ES:TS:2022:1451). What that ruling does not do, and what no ruling can do, is supply the accounting. That has to be built.
On deadlines and on who pays. Two questions that decide whether a community pursues a case at all. A recent ruling clarifies the counting of the investigation time limit under article 324 of the Criminal Procedure Act and sets out the costs regime for a private prosecution (STS 747/2024, 18 July, Criminal Chamber, cassation 2295/2022, ROJ: STS 4260/2024, ECLI:ES:TS:2024:4260). Both should be understood before a general meeting votes to proceed.
These references come from the firm’s own knowledge base. They must be checked against the original source before being relied on in any pleading, and this page is not legal advice.
Process
Investigation. The Investigation Section takes statements, orders expert evidence, requires bank and registry disclosure and decides precautionary measures. This is where the case is won or lost.
Time limits. The law caps the length of an investigation and requires reasoned extension applications. Where banking evidence is needed, letting that clock expire ends the enquiry before the picture is complete.
Fast-track trials. Certain offences caught in the act are dealt with within days, with a reduced sentence offered for an admission. It is a decision taken quickly, under pressure, and it is the worst possible moment to be unrepresented.
Minor offences are resolved in one hearing. They leave a record and can carry administrative consequences for a foreign national.
Enforcement. Suspension of sentence and the effect of a conviction on residence. These frequently matter more to the client than the offence.
What decides it
In community cases, the accounting. What sustains a prosecution is a forensic reconstruction that follows the money transaction by transaction and compares it with what should have happened. Without that there is suspicion, not evidence. And the records must come from the bank, not from the person under investigation.
In fraud cases, speed and traceability. Complete statements rather than screenshots, contracts with annexes, listings captured before they are deleted. Fraudulent advertisements vanish within days.
In assault cases, the first forty-eight hours. Witnesses to an incident here in August will be in another country by September.
And in all of them, the decision whether to speak. The right of defence exists from the moment an offence is attributed to you, and the Constitutional Court has placed access to the essential elements of the file before the first questioning.
Private prosecution
Report a crime and go home and you are a witness. The case is driven by the public prosecutor, carrying hundreds of files, acting on grounds of general interest rather than yours.
Appearing as a private prosecution, with your own lawyer and court agent, makes you a party: full sight of the file, the ability to propose lines of enquiry, to appeal, to frame your own charge and to claim your own compensation.
On this coast the clearest example is the community of owners case. The forensic accounting that quantifies a loss is not commissioned by the prosecutor of its own motion. Specific disclosure requests to specific banks for specific periods must be drafted and justified by somebody. What nobody asks for is not investigated, and the file is then closed for want of evidence when in truth nobody looked.
The same applies to rental and investment fraud, where the decisive step is identifying the receiving account and locating the other victims of the same scheme. Individually the sums look too small to pursue. Aggregated, they are a different case entirely, and it is the total defrauded, not each victim’s loss, that determines how the offence is classified.
How we work
English throughout, and in writing. Every significant ruling explained in a comprehensible email. Interpreters are for hearings; your relationship with your own lawyer should not need one.
The file read before any statement. We enter an appearance and examine the proceedings first, then advise.
Acting for communities properly. We work from a resolution of the general meeting, with the accounts audited first, and we will tell you before you spend anything whether there is a criminal case or only a civil one.
Grouping victims. In rental and investment fraud we actively look for others caught by the same scheme. A case with twenty complainants is treated very differently from one with a single complainant.
Fixed fees by stage, quoted in writing before you commit, with costs shared where several victims act together.
Who we act for
Communities of owners across the urbanisations of the coast, both where funds have gone missing and where a committee member is himself accused.
Retired residents defrauded of savings, who frequently delayed reporting out of embarrassment. The delay is understandable and is never a reason not to act now.
Non-resident owners returning to a burglary, an occupation or a missing service charge fund. We act under power of attorney.
People arrested while visiting, whose case continues after they fly home. Leaving Spain does not close proceedings, and an unresolved file can produce a warrant that surfaces years later at the border.
People drawn into money laundering through what appeared to be a legitimate job.
Practical
These cases are decided by documents, and documents degrade fast. Listings are deleted, managing agents are replaced, companies are dissolved and the neighbours who remember what happened move away.
For a community matter: minutes of every relevant general meeting, the accounts as approved, the management contract with its renewals, and the community’s own bank records requested directly from the bank. What the administrator prepared is not independent evidence of what the administrator did, and that distinction decides these cases.
For a rental or purchase fraud: the listing saved in full including the web address, all correspondence in its original form, and proof of every payment naming the beneficiary and the account used. Bank statements, not screenshots of an app.
For an investment loss: every transfer with date, amount and destination, images of the platform showing the supposed balance and any withdrawal request, and whole conversations rather than selected messages. The small talk before the first deposit often matters more than the discussion of money, because it establishes how the confidence was built.
For an arrest: the custody paperwork you were given, the names and numbers of anyone present, and a written note of the sequence of events made while you still remember it clearly.
Do not edit or reorganise any of it. Send it exactly as you hold it, even if it feels fragmentary or embarrassing. Cases are regularly built on material clients assumed was worthless.
Related
Questions
Because Orihuela Costa is part of the municipality of Orihuela, which is its own judicial district. Proximity does not determine the competent court; the judicial demarcation does. It is the single most common misunderstanding we encounter on this coast.
With a resolution at the general meeting to audit the accounts, and with the community’s banking records obtained directly from the bank. Not with the statements the administrator produced. Only on that foundation can misappropriation or disloyal administration be assessed, and complaints filed without it are routinely dismissed.
Yes, and not mainly for your own sum. The same listing usually defrauds dozens of families in a season, and the classification of the offence depends on the total defrauded rather than each individual loss. Without complaints there is no investigation at all.
Largely yes. Your lawyer can act under a power of attorney for most steps. You are needed for your own statement and for trial, and video link is sometimes available. What matters is appointing a lawyer and giving an address for service before you leave, because summonses you never receive still take effect.
It can. The effect varies with nationality, the type of residence held and the sentence. It is not automatic. It should be assessed early, because it sometimes changes which procedural outcome is genuinely in your interest.
A written fixed quote by stage, before you commit, together with an honest assessment of prospects. If we think the case is not worth running, we will tell you.
Next step
If the paperwork says Orihuela and you were expecting Torrevieja, nothing has gone wrong. But the clock is running, and the first decision in the case is taken before you walk into the room.
Arrested or under investigation in Orihuela Costa?
Our criminal defence team assists English-speaking clients 24 hours a day. Urgent line: 669 30 21 13 — Alicante and across Spain.
Société de Conseil Juridique et Expert es un despacho de abogados con sedes en Madrid, Alicante, Londres y París, especializado en defensa y acusación penal, delitos económicos y corporativos y derecho tecnológico. Trabajamos con orientación estratégica en procedimientos penales complejos, propiedad intelectual y análisis forense avanzado, y prestamos consultoría jurídica, compliance y escudos de protección a particulares y empresas. Atendemos desde Alicante y Madrid, con consulta online en toda España y asistencia al detenido 24 horas. Resuelva sus dudas en las preguntas frecuentes o solicite una primera consulta.
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