Spanish customer in insolvency (concurso): how to claim your debt

For a foreign supplier, a Spanish customer's insolvency often comes to light by accident: an unanswered reminder, a returned direct debit, a mention from another supplier. By then the clock may already be running. Spain's insolvency procedure, the concurso de acreedores, gives creditors a short window to file their claim, and nobody is obliged to translate it for you.

Step one: confirm the insolvency and the date

A Spanish court declares insolvency by issuing an order (auto). A notice is published in the Official Gazette (BOE) and in the Spanish insolvency register (Registro Público Concursal), which you can search by company name or tax ID (NIF). The notice shows the court, the case number and the insolvency administrator. If you only have a trade name, check the company's legal name and NIF first.

The date of publication in the BOE matters most: your deadline starts the day after.

If you are not sure you have the right entity, our guide on checking whether a Spanish company exists helps.

You have one month to file

Under the consolidated Spanish Insolvency Act (Royal Legislative Decree 1/2020, as amended), the court order calls on creditors to notify their claims to the insolvency administrator within one month from the day after publication in the BOE (article 28.1.4). Spain is subject to the EU Insolvency Regulation, which has its own information duties towards known foreign creditors in other Member States, but do not rely on receiving a letter: monitor the register yourself.

What the claim must contain (article 256):

• Your identity details and address.
• The claim: origin, amount, dates when it arose and fell due, its features and the ranking you are asking for.
• Any security you hold (for example retention of title), and the assets affected.
• A postal or email address for the administrator's replies.
• Copies of supporting documents: invoices, delivery notes, the contract, any acknowledgement of debt.

Where to send it (article 257): in writing and signed, to the insolvency administrator, not the court. It can be filed at the administrator's designated address or electronically. Preparing it in Spanish avoids delays, even where other EU languages may be accepted.

Filing late costs you your ranking

A claim filed after the deadline but before the final list of creditors can still be recognised, but it is normally ranked as subordinated (articles 268.2 and 281.1.1), unless the creditor shows it could not have known about the claim in time or the claim is one the administrator must recognise anyway. Subordinated creditors are paid after everyone else, which in practice usually means nothing.

How claims are ranked

Class	Typical examples	Payment order
Special privilege	Mortgage, pledge, retention of title	Against the secured asset, up to its fair value
General privilege	Some salaries, tax and social security withholdings, half of certain public claims	Before ordinary claims
Ordinary	A normal supplier invoice	After privileged claims, pro rata
Subordinated	Late claims, interest, claims by related parties	Last

An unsecured trade invoice is usually ordinary. Check the ranking in the administrator's report and list of creditors; challenging it is subject to a deadline and is the point where a Spanish lawyer earns their fee.

What stops working

• Enforcement. No new enforcement can be started against the debtor's assets, and pending enforcement is suspended (articles 142 and 143), with narrow exceptions.
• Separate lawsuits. Civil courts will not admit claims that fall within the insolvency judge's jurisdiction (article 136). A payment order (monitorio) you were preparing is no longer the route.
• Interest. Interest stops accruing from the declaration, except for some claims such as secured ones (article 152).
• Limitation. Limitation periods against the debtor are interrupted while the proceedings last (article 155). See our guide on limitation periods for unpaid invoices.

Anything the company buys from you after the declaration is dealt with separately from the old debt. If you keep supplying, agree clear payment terms, ideally upfront.

VAT on the unpaid invoice

If you charged Spanish VAT (for example through a Spanish VAT registration), article 80.Tres of the Spanish VAT Act lets you reduce the taxable base when the customer is declared insolvent after the supply took place. The deadline is two months from the end of the claim-filing period, roughly three months from BOE publication. There are formal steps (a corrective invoice and notifications), so confirm them with your Spanish tax adviser. For cross-border supplies where your customer accounted for the VAT, your own country's bad-debt rules apply instead.

A 30-day checklist

1. Find the notice and record the BOE publication date.
2. Identify the insolvency administrator and their electronic address.
3. Gather invoices, delivery notes, contract and any acknowledgement of debt.
4. Calculate principal plus late-payment interest up to the declaration date (how to calculate it).
5. File the claim and keep proof of submission.
6. Diary the VAT deadline if it applies to you.

Before the next one

Insolvency rarely arrives without signs: longer delays, a new contact person, smaller orders. A credit check before granting payment terms and regular monitoring limit the damage. If the debtor is not insolvent, see what to do about an unpaid invoice from a Spanish company and our debt collection use case.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Article numbers refer to the consolidated text published in the BOE; check the current wording before acting.