Limitation periods for unpaid invoices in Spain: how long you have

Foreign suppliers tend to find out about Spanish limitation periods too late: the customer finally answers a demand letter, and the answer is that the debt is time-barred. Spain's rules are not unusual by European standards, but the starting point, the exceptions and the way the clock is reset differ enough from English or German practice to be worth checking now rather than in year five.

First question: is Spanish law the right law?

Limitation is normally governed by the law of the contract. If your terms of sale say German, French or English law applies, look at that law first. If the contract is silent, the EU Rome I Regulation usually points to the law of the seller's country for a sale of goods, and to the provider's country for services. If you sued in Spain, though, Spanish procedure applies in any case, and Spanish customers' lawyers will often argue for Spanish law. If you sell to Spain regularly, choose the governing law in writing.

The rest of this guide assumes Spanish law applies.

The general rule: five years from the due date

Article 1964.2 of the Spanish Civil Code gives five years for personal claims with no special period, counted "from when performance can be demanded". For an invoice, that is the due date, not the invoice date. An invoice issued on 15 March 2022 on 60-day terms starts its five years in mid-May 2022.

Until October 2015 the period was fifteen years. Law 42/2015 cut it to five, with transitional rules for older debts. If you still hold a pre-2015 claim, get advice before writing it off or chasing it.

Spain's late payment law (Law 3/2004) caps agreed B2B terms at 60 days and defaults to 30 days from delivery if nothing is agreed, so write the due date on the invoice. It makes the start of the period easy to prove.

Claims with a three-year period

Article 1967 sets three years for a list of obligations written in 1889 language. The ones a foreign business is most likely to meet:

Claim	Typical case
Fees of lawyers, notaries, experts, agents	A consultant's or surveyor's fee note
Tradespeople's services and the supplies they provide	Installation or repair work
Food and lodging supplied by innkeepers	Hospitality
Goods sold by merchants to buyers who are not merchants	Retail sales on credit to consumers

Selling goods to a Spanish company that uses them in its business generally falls under the five-year rule. Professional fees and sales to end consumers may fall under three. Spanish courts read these categories case by case, so plan around the shorter period when in doubt.

Periodic payments, such as rent or recurring fees, also prescribe after five years, with each instalment counted separately (article 1966).

Catalonia is different

Catalonia has its own Civil Code, with a general ten-year period (article 121-20) and a three-year period (article 121-21) for claims including periodic payments and fees for services. Courts there don't always agree on which applies to a given debt. If your customer is in Barcelona, Girona, Lleida or Tarragona, or your contract points to Catalan law, check the text on the Portal Jurídic de Catalunya and ask a local lawyer.

Stopping the clock

Under article 1973 of the Civil Code, the limitation period is interrupted by:

• A court claim, including a monitorio payment order.
• An out-of-court demand from the creditor. It has to be provable. Spaniards use the burofax, a postal service that certifies the content and delivery of a letter, because it settles both points.
• Any acknowledgement of the debt by the debtor: a payment plan, a part payment, an email saying "we'll pay next month". Keep them all.

Interruption in Spain resets the clock: the full period starts again. That differs from some systems where the period is only suspended.

There is one more Spanish detail. Since April 2025, Organic Law 1/2025 requires a documented attempt at negotiation before most civil claims, and its article 7 provides that this attempt also interrupts limitation. A well-drafted burofax proposing a settlement can do both jobs.

A demand only counts if it reaches the right party. Spanish companies move offices and change phone numbers; if your last letter came back, start by locating the debtor.

A worked example

A Dutch packaging supplier sold €12,000 of goods to a food producer in Murcia under Spanish law, due on 20 November 2021. Several emails went unanswered and nobody sent anything formal. The five-year period would end around 20 November 2026. A burofax sent in early November 2026 restarts the clock. Waiting until January gives the producer a complete defence, however clear the debt.

Keeping track across a portfolio

If you invoice several Spanish customers, a simple spreadsheet does the job:

1. Record each open invoice's due date.
2. Add five years (or three, if article 1967 may apply) to get the deadline.
3. Set a review date a year before: chase, settle or write off.
4. Log every interruption (burofax, acknowledgement, part payment) and recalculate.
5. Review quarterly. The year-end is a natural point, alongside our guide to chasing unpaid Spanish invoices before 31 December.

Time-barred is not the same as cancelled

A time-barred debt still exists. The debtor may pay it, and a voluntary payment generally cannot be reclaimed. What you lose is the ability to enforce it in court if the debtor raises limitation. Threatening legal action you know you cannot win is a bad idea in any country.

Meanwhile, late payment interest keeps accruing on the claims that are still alive, which is one more reason to act early.

Our debt collection use case explains how to find a current phone number and email for a Spanish debtor company, so your demand reaches someone who can actually pay.

This article is for information only and is not legal advice. Limitation rules depend on the type of claim, the governing law and case law, and they can change. Check the current text on the BOE and consult a Spanish lawyer for your case.