Introduction

In comparison to France and Germany, which are two of the more prosperous well-developed stable European countries and have such a wealth of legal literature, there are problems with Spain and these are reflected in the state of the library's holdings for this jurisdiction. Spain is the second largest country in Western Europe, it is also a rapidly developing country and relatively poor, has gone through great political, economic and legal changes in recent years, and continues to do so. Our collection will need to keep up to date and reflect these ongoing reforms.

The majority of the primary resources accessible at IALS are in Spanish. Details are given of the limited English language sources where available.

Information resources on the Internet are less well developed for Spain than for other European countries. Where available, sources are given at the end of the relevant section. Fuller details of these sources can be found by using INTUTE.

 

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Primary sources: constitution

Similar to other continental jurisdictions, IALS sources are mainly commercial publications rather than official ones.

Legislación constitucional. Editorial Ariel, 2005-6 (Pedro Cruz Villalón) provides the text of the Constitution accompanied by related legislation.

A Spanish language version  of the constitution is also available on the official website of the 'Senado'.

Blaustein & Flanz. Constitutions of the countries of the World provides an English language version. This looseleaf publication is regularly updated.

 

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Primary sources: codes and statutes

Spanish law is based mainly on Roman law, and much of the basic law derives from codes which were compiled in the 19th century under the influence of the Napoleonic codes.

The most important codes are the Código Civil (Civil Code); Código Comercio (Commercial Code); Código Penal (Penal Code); Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil (Law of Civil Procedure) and Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal (Law of Criminal Procedure; together with the later Código del Trabajo (Labour Code) and Leyes Civiles Forales (Civil Law of the Provinces).

The most recent editions of the codes we have in the library are those published by Editorial Civitas in their series Biblioteca de Legislación. These unofficial commercially published annotated editions are:-

Código Civil, 19th ed., 2006
Código de Comercio y leyes complementarias, 30th ed., 2006
Código Penal, 32nd ed., 2006
Legislación sobre enjuiciamiento Civil, 29th ed., 2006

Enjuiciamiento Criminal, 27th ed., 2006

This collection could be expanded to cover other areas of the law.

Spanish legislation becomes law once it is published in the Boletin Oficial del Estado (Spanish official gazette).

IALS access: From 1995- in microfiche and as a stand alone CD from 1998-

Internet access: http://www.boe.es/g/es/   This site offers free access to the following resources. Users can search and retrieve documents free of charge. A subscription is required for access to added editorial commentary. All texts are in Spanish only:

Full text of the Boletin Oficial from 1995-
Archive of historical editions of the Boletin from 1875-1967
Full text of Spanish legislation from 1968-

Commercial series: IALS also subscribes to an authoritative commercial series of legislation: Repertorio Cronológico de Legislación. This series started publication in 1930 and IALS holdings are from 1975 until 2002. Cumulative indices are also available.

 

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Law reports

As with most civil law countries, judicial decisions are not of primary importance. Judicial decisions (sentencias) of the Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo) collectively called 'jurisprudencia' are not binding decisions although they have some persuasive force. It seems in practice that the commercial series of judicial decisions are more popular than official sources. Judicial decisions of the Supreme Court have been published in the official Gaceta de Madrid (Madrid Gazette), but this has been unwieldy and access is not straightforward. Consequently because of these difficulties the commercial sources have come to be preferred.

The main commercial series of law reports is:

Repertorio de Jurisprudencia, 1930-31 onwards. Editorial Aranzadi, Pamplona

This is a comprehensive collection of judicial decisions of the Supreme Court. The IALS library has this from l980, Volume 47 onwards. It contains the majority of all public international law cases.

Repertorio Aranzadi del Tribunal Constitucional, (Decisions of the Constitutional Court) l981 onwards. Editorial Aranzadi, Pamplona

The Constitutional Court (Tribunal Constitucional) has nationwide jurisdiction over issues relating to the Constitution and is not part of the judicial branch. Decisions of the Constitutional Court set binding precedent as interpretations of the Constitution. IALS does not subscribe but these decisions from 1980 onwards can be searched within the BOE website at http://www.boe.es/g/es/iberlex/bases_datos/tc.php

Revista de la Corte Española de Arbitraje (Journal of the Spanish Arbitration Court) 1984 onwards (not held at IALS)

This contains published decisions of international arbitration.

Revista Española de derecho international, 1945 onwards (held at IALS)

This contains extracts and notes of public international law cases (as reported in the Repertorio de Jurisprudencia) but not full reports.

 

Journals

The library holds a selection of Spanish legal periodicals, including all the older well-established titles. A list of the current titles only follows with an indication of our holdings:

Anuario de Derecho Civil. l948, Volume 1 onwards
Revista de Derecho Mercantil. l948, Volume 5 onwards (imperfect)
Revista Española de Derecho Constitucional. 1999, Vol. 19 (55) onwards
Revista Jurídica de Cataluña, 1950 onwards
Revista Jurídica de Cataluña, Jurisprudencia.1971 onwards

Spanish Yearbook of International Law 1991 onwards

It is also worth noting the Revue Européenne de Droit Public/ European Review of Public Law, (held at IALS from 1999 onwards).  This is the first multi-national and multi-lingual review intended to promote the knowledge of the public law of each European country to fellow members of the Community. What looks particularly interesting in this context are the annotated bibliographies for member countries.

Gaps in the library's holdings of Spanish periodicals would tend to be more recently established titles. This reflects the library's lack of resources to expand new periodical titles generally for most jurisdictions over this period.

The most important titles missing from our holdings are:

Anuario de Derechos Humanos, 1981 onwards. Universidad Complutense, Facultad de Derecho, Instituto de Derecho Humanos
Boletín de Jurisprudencia Constitucional, 1981 onwards. Cortes Generales, Madrid
Justicia, l981 onwards. Libreria Bosch, Barcelona
Revista de Estudios e Investigación de las Comunidades Europeas, l988 onwards. Editoriales de Derecho Reunidas, Madrid
Revista de la Corte Española de Arbitraje, l984 onwards. Consejo Superior de Camaras de Comercio, Industria y Navegación de España, Madrid. (Already mentioned in the Law Reports section above)

 

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Treatises

IALS undertook a review of Spanish book collections in 2007. The following selection is a representative sample. Please consult the catalogue for further texts.

Administrative law:

Manual de Derecho Administrativo - Tomo 1.  Luis M. Cosculluela Montaner.  Civitas 2006

Constitutional law:

La Reforma de la Justicia Constitucional.  Juan Fernando López Aguilar. Thomson Aranzadi 2006

Family law:

Comentarios a las Reformas de Derecho de Familia de 2005. José Ramón De Verda y Beamonte. Aranzadi 2006

Intellectual property:

Comentarios a la Ley de la Propriedad Intelectual.  Real Decreto Legislativo 1/1996, de 12 abril . J. Miguel Rodríguez  et al.  Civitas 2007

Labour / employment law:

Comentario a la reforma laboral de 2006: Ley 43/2006, de 29 Diciembre. Alfredo Montoya Melgar et al. Civitas 2007

 

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English language works on Spanish law

Always a popular demand, it has begun in earnest since the accession of Spain to the EC in 1986. At first there was very little in English, and inevitably such publications tended to be monographs of the 'doing business with Spain' variety, but more recently the field is beginning to open up to other subjects.

The following publications are in the library:

Jiménez Piernas, Carlos. The legal practice in international law and European Community law. A Spanish perspective. 2007
Spanish corporation tax legislation. Kluwer, 2000
Spanish corporation law & limited company liability law. Kluwer, 1996
Merino-Blanco, E. Spanish law and the legal system. Sweet & Maxwell, 2nd ed., 2006

Romanach, J. Civil code of Spain  (as of August 1994).
Villiers, Charlotte The Spanish legal tradition. Ashgate 1999

It is worthwhile browsing the shelves as some general comparative texts include a chapter on Spain. Sections on Spain can be found in the following works, all of which are in the library:

Bona, M. & Mead, P. Personal injury compensation in Europe: a comparative study. 2003

Dabbah, M. & Lasok, P. ed. Merger control worldwide. 2005

Kinsella, S. & Comeaux, P. Digest of commercial laws of the world. Looseleaf 1998-

Maitland-Walker, J. ed. Competition laws of Europe. 2nd ed. 2003

Simmons & Simmons. Encylopedia of European  telecommunications laws. 2000

Zimmermann, Klaus F. European migration. 2005

Other useful sources of information in the library include:

Commercial Laws of Europe, 1978-. Monthly, Sweet & Maxwell.
Bulletin of Legal Developments: a fortnightly survey of legal events worldwide and internationally, 1966-, Fortnightly, British Institute of International & Comparative Law.

 

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Resource guides

Cabrero, Olga. Guide to legal research in Spain. Published on the GlobaLex web site 2005

Harvard Law School web site (Section on foreign jurisdictions)

Kim-Prieto, Dennis. A brief guide to select databases for Spanish speaking jurisdictions.  Published on the GlobaLex web site 2007

Recursos Internet en Derecho. A Spanish language site giving full text access to legal materials.

The Spanish section of WorldLII, the law index and search service maintained by the Australasian Legal Information Institute, allows the browsing and searching of selected sites containing Spanish primary legal materials.

Another useful resource is the FLAG Foreign law Guide (Search on Spain to discover which UK research and national libraries hold materials on Spanish law).

 

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