Article 790 Spanish Criminal Procedure Act: Appeal Against Judgment in the Abbreviated Procedure

1. The judgment given by the criminal court is appealable to the corresponding Provincial Court, and that of the Central Criminal Court to the Criminal Division of the National Court. The appeal may be lodged by any of the parties within the ten days following notification of the judgment. During that period the file shall be available to the parties at the judicial office, and within three days of notification of the judgment they may request a copy of the media on which the sessions were recorded, with suspension of the period for lodging the appeal. The computation of the period shall resume once the copies requested have been delivered.

A party which has not appealed within that period may join the appeal at the stage of submissions provided for in paragraph 5, advancing such claims and grounds as it sees fit. In all cases that appeal shall be conditional on the appellant maintaining its own.

The other parties may contest the joinder within two days, once the transmission provided for in paragraph 6 has been effected.

2. The pleading formalising the appeal shall be filed before the body that gave the decision challenged, and shall set out, in order, the submissions as to breach of procedural rules and guarantees, error in the assessment of the evidence, or infringement of rules of law on which the challenge is based. The appellant must also designate an address for service in the place where the Provincial Court sits.

If the appeal seeks a declaration of nullity of the trial for breach of procedural rules or guarantees causing the appellant to be deprived of a proper defence, in terms such that it cannot be remedied at second instance, the legal or constitutional provisions considered to have been infringed shall be cited and the reasons for that deprivation shall be stated. It must also be shown that remedy of the defect or infringement was sought at first instance, save where it was committed at a time when the objection was already impossible.

Where the prosecution alleges error in the assessment of the evidence in order to seek the annulment of an acquittal or the aggravation of a conviction, it shall be necessary to establish the insufficiency or lack of rationality of the factual reasoning, the manifest departure from the maxims of experience, or the omission of any reasoning as to one or more of the items of evidence taken which might be relevant, or whose nullity has been improperly declared.

3. In the same pleading the appellant may request the taking of evidence which it was unable to propose at first instance, of evidence proposed and improperly refused, provided that a formal protest was made at the time, and of evidence admitted but not taken for reasons not attributable to the appellant.

4. On receipt of the pleading formalising the appeal, the judge shall admit the appeal if it meets the requirements. Where a remediable defect is found, the appellant shall be given a period of not more than three days to remedy it.

5. Once the appeal has been admitted, the judicial officer shall transmit the pleading formalising it to the other parties for a common period of ten days. Within that period the other parties must file their pleadings of submissions, in which the taking of evidence may be requested in the terms established in paragraph 3 and in which an address for service shall be designated.

6. Once the pleadings of submissions have been filed, or the period for doing so has expired, the officer shall, within the following two days, transmit each of them to the other parties and shall send the original file to the Provincial Court with all the pleadings filed.

Working translation prepared by Société Juridique from the consolidated Spanish text published by the Official State Gazette. It has no official status: the only authoritative version is the Spanish original, available at the Official State Gazette and reproduced verbatim in our Spanish-language entry for this provision. Source: Royal Decree of 14 September 1882 approving the Spanish Criminal Procedure Act.