How to Search for Case Law for Free in Spain: Complete Source Guide

How to Search for Case Law for Free in Spain: Complete Guide

Case law research consumes hours every week. Knowing the sources and mastering their search tools makes the difference.

1. CENDOJ

The Judicial Documentation Center (poderjudicial.es/search) is the most important free source: 7M+ decisions, all courts, from the 1990s, full anonymized text.

Identifiers: ROJ (STS 1234/2025) and ECLI (ECLI:ES:TS:2025:1234).

Advanced search: free text, court, decision type, date, jurisdiction, reporting judge, appeal number, ROJ.

Tips: quotes for exact phrases, boolean operators (AND/OR/NOT), search by law article, filter by SC chamber, search by reporting judge.

Limitations: keyword-only (no synonyms), no judgment relationships, no doctrinal notes, dated interface.

2. Constitutional Court

Independent search engine (hj.tribunalconstitucional.es): all judgments since 1980, complete dissenting opinions. Allows searching by affected fundamental right.

3. BOE, HUDOC, EUR-Lex

BOE: consolidated legislation, TC judgments. HUDOC (ECHR): all judgments since 1959, filter by Respondent State: Spain. EUR-Lex + CURIA: EU legislation and CJEU case law.

4. Paid Databases

The main ones are Aranzadi and La Ley (Aranzadi LA LEY), El Derecho, vLex and Tirant lo Blanch. Aranzadi LA LEY does not publish prices on its website and offers a demo request (according to its website, checked on 11 November 2026); for the others, check their websites or ask for an offer.

They offer over CENDOJ: case notes, judgment relationships, subject descriptors, templates, alerts, commented legislation.

5. Semantic Search vs. Keyword Search

CENDOJ's fundamental limitation: exact word matching only. Searching "unfair dismissal" won't find "declaration of unfairness of the termination." Semantic search understands meaning: equivalent concepts, synonyms, semantic relationships.

6. Search Strategy

1. Start with Supreme Court (binding) ( 2. Move to Provincial/High Court ) 3. Search by law article ( 4. Narrow by date (3-5 years) ) 5. Identify reporting judge, 6. Verify not reversed

How Lexiel Revolutionizes Search

Corpus of 130,000+ official sources, semantic search (natural language), verified citations against CENDOJ and BOE (unconfirmed ones are flagged), ratio decidendi summaries, drafting integration, LATAM coverage.

Key difference: in CENDOJ you search for words; in Lexiel you search for meaning, and each citation is marked verified or not so you can check it.

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