Clarifying, correcting or completing a Spanish judgment: the remedies in arts. 214 and 215 LEC

The general rule is invariability: a court cannot change its own decision once it has been signed (art. 214.1 LEC). But the law itself opens four fast remedies, before the same court that issued the decision and with no need to appeal: clarification of unclear wording, correction of clerical and arithmetical errors, cure of omissions or defects that prevent the decision from being carried out, and completion of claims that were left unresolved (what Spanish procedure calls incongruencia omisiva, a failure to rule on a point that was raised).

They are not appeals: no higher court decides them, they carry no tasa (official fee) and no deposit, and they are handled far faster than an appeal. They work for sentencias (judgments) and autos (reasoned court orders), and also for the decretos issued by the Letrado de la Administracion de Justicia, the senior court clerk who runs the procedural side of a case (arts. 214.2 and 215.4 LEC). In the other court jurisdictions the equivalent rule is art. 267 LOPJ.

Everything turns on choosing the right remedy and acting in time: two of the four expire within 2 or 5 working days of notification.

Clarification of an unclear point and the cure of omissions or defects must be requested within the 2 working days following notification of the decision (arts. 214.2 and 215.1 LEC). Completion of a missing ruling has 5 working days from notification (art. 215.2 LEC). Obvious clerical errors and arithmetical errors are the exception: they can be corrected at any time, even when the judgment is already final (art. 214.3 LEC).

Deadlines are counted in working days: Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays and the whole of August are excluded, because August does not count for procedural purposes except for urgent steps (art. 130.2 LEC and art. 183 LOPJ).

The court has deadlines too: a clarification requested by a party must be decided within the 3 days following the filing of the application (art. 214.2 LEC). In a completion, the Letrado de la Administracion de Justicia passes your request to the other parties, who have 5 days for written submissions (alegaciones), and the court then issues an auto granting or refusing it (art. 215.2 LEC). The court may also complete its own decision on its own initiative within 5 days of issuing it (art. 215.3 LEC).

Yes. An application for clarification, correction, cure or completion interrupts the deadline for any appeal available against the decision (art. 215.5 LEC and art. 267.9 LOPJ). Art. 267.9 LOPJ adds that, in every case, the appeal period starts to run on the day after notification of the auto that decides the request, whether it grants it or refuses it.

Be careful about using this route only to gain time: the case law has warned that a manifestly improper request, filed for the sole purpose of stretching the appeal deadline, may not produce that interrupting effect. That is why the application has to identify a real defect and fit it into the correct article.

A prudent tip: if you already know you are going to appeal, do not cut it fine. Prepare the appeal in parallel and count the deadline from notification of the auto, not from the judgment.

They can never be used to change the ruling, to re-assess the evidence or to correct a point of law. The invariability rule in art. 214.1 LEC has constitutional weight: the Tribunal Constitucional (Spain's Constitutional Court) quashed a clarification order that altered an award of costs on the pretext of correcting a clerical error, because that meant changing what had been decided, not clarifying it (STC 185/2008).

The practical dividing line: a sum done wrong or transposed figures is an arithmetical error and can be corrected at any time; finding the percentage or the criterion applied unfair is a disagreement on the merits and calls for an appeal. Nor is this the route for questions that belong to the enforcement of the judgment: courts reject them and refer them to enforcement proceedings.

No appeal at all lies against the auto that decides a clarification, correction, cure or completion (arts. 214.4 and 215.5 LEC); what you can appeal is the original judgment or order, within its own deadline.

There is no official standard form: it is a party's written application addressed to the same court that issued the decision. It has to identify the proceedings and the case number, the decision concerned and the date it was notified, the exact passage where the defect lies, the article that supports the request (214 or 215 LEC) and, strongly advisable, the precise wording you propose.

If a procurador (a court agent who files documents in the case on your behalf) is involved in your proceedings, because representation is compulsory under art. 23 LEC, he or she files it electronically in the case file that is already open. If representation is not compulsory, you can file it yourself at the court's own registry.

Managora drafts the application for you, checks which of the four remedies fits your case and keeps track of the 2 or 5 day deadline. The service does not include legal representation in court: we do not provide a procurador and we do not appear at hearings. You can see the current price on the service page; there is no court tasa.

The most frequent one: asking through a clarification for something that requires an appeal. If what you want is for the judge to change what was decided, the request will be refused and valuable time will have been lost. The second: confusing completion (5 days) with clarification (2 days) and filing the wrong remedy out of time.

It is also a mistake to let the appeal deadline pass while relying on a poorly founded request, to fail to keep the proof of the notification date (it is what sets the start of every deadline), or to ask for the correction of a supposed arithmetical error that is really the judge's method of calculation.

If you have received a judgment or an order with an error, an omission or a forgotten ruling, Managora identifies the correct remedy, drafts the application and warns you of every deadline. You can order it from the service page for clarification, correction, cure and completion, with the current price.