Removing your name from ASNEF, Experian and CIRBE after debt discharge in Spain

The law provides for it, but not automatically. Article 492 ter of the Ley Concursal (Spanish Insolvency Act) states that the court order granting debt discharge through asset liquidation, or granting final discharge after a payment plan, must include an order directing the affected creditors to report the discharge to the credit information systems they previously notified of the default. It is the creditor who must notify them, not the court or the bureau, and only regarding the discharged debt. The Bank of Spain applies the same rule to CIRBE: the court order requires financial entities to amend and cancel what they declared.

The law sets no deadline in days or months: it simply says 'for the due updating of their records'. And the order is not always obeyed. The Bank of Spain itself recognises that many entities fail to rectify records after a discharge, for various reasons: they do not know the insolvency proceedings took place or ended, the court did not send the order, or the entity was not diligent. That is why the same law gives you a second route: you can request a certified copy (testimonio) of the court order and directly demand that the bureaus update their records to reflect the discharge.

With a payment plan, the timeline is different. Provisional discharge, granted when the plan is approved, does not include that order to creditors. It arrives with the final discharge order, once the plan ends without revocation: after 3 years, or after 5 years if your primary residence is not sold or if payments depend mainly on future income. No rule states whether you can demand removal while the plan is still running, so we do not promise it before final discharge.

Once you have the court order, the tool is data protection law. Discharged debt is extinguished: the creditor can no longer take any action to collect it, other than requesting revocation. And the law only presumes it lawful to keep debts in a credit bureau if they are certain, past due and enforceable, and only while the default persists. Those two facts are the basis for requesting removal.

Two court orders qualify: the order granting discharge with asset liquidation, including no-asset insolvency proceedings, and the final discharge order that closes a payment plan. Neither the order declaring insolvency nor the provisional discharge order qualifies. Declaring insolvency halts enforcement actions against your assets, but it does not extinguish the debt, and no rule requires the entry to be removed during the proceedings.

The testimonio is the certified copy of the court order issued by the Commercial Section of the Court of First Instance (Sección de lo Mercantil del Tribunal de Instancia) that handled the insolvency. If we handled your insolvency, our procurador (court procedural representative) requests it within the same proceedings and you do not have to do anything. If it was handled elsewhere, you simply need to provide us with the certified copy or the court order showing its certificate of finality. As a natural person, you pay no court tasa (official fee).

Also keep to hand the list of creditors or the annex to the court order listing the discharged debts. The Spanish Supreme Court, in judgments 254/2026 and 260/2026 of 18 February, established that discharge only covers the debts that the debtor listed and that the court order identifies. A debt that was not on the list is not covered, and you cannot request its removal with that court order. Before writing to anyone, we cross-check what appears in the bureaus against what the court order says.

In Spain, the two credit default bureaus most consulted by banks and lenders are ASNEF, managed by Equifax, and Badexcug, run by Experian. Equifax is not a third bureau separate from ASNEF. Each one is checked separately by exercising your right of access under the General Data Protection Regulation: they must tell you whether they are processing your data, which data, where it came from, to whom it has been disclosed, and how long they will keep it. It is free and the data controller has 1 month to reply.

You can exercise this right yourself or through a voluntary representative, and the bureau must offer easily accessible means; it cannot refuse because you choose a channel different from its own. A useful clue: when they listed you, the bureau had to notify you within the following 30 days. That letter tells you which bureau you are in.

Two legal limits worth knowing. Debts with a principal amount under €50 cannot be listed. And no debt can remain listed for more than 5 years from the due date of the obligation, whether there is a discharge or not. At Managora we exercise the right of access before both bureaus with your signed authorisation, without a digital certificate, and from the replies we know whom to write to.

CIRBE, the Bank of Spain's Central Credit Register (Central de Información de Riesgos del Banco de España), is not a defaulters' list. It is a public service that records the credit risks declared by financial entities, transaction by transaction: performing loans and credit lines as well as unpaid ones. That is why a discharged debt that continues to be declared as active is inaccurate data, and the entity is obliged to declare accurate, up-to-date data.

The risk report is free and the Bank of Spain delivers it within a maximum of 10 working days. Online, it requires a digital certificate or Cl@ve (Spain's public digital login system). Without them, a natural person can request it in person by appointment, or by post to Calle Alcalá, 48, 28014 Madrid, enclosing form FDU-031 signed by hand and a copy of their Spanish national ID (DNI) or NIE (foreigner's identification number in Spain). We never ask for your digital certificate or your Cl@ve, and they are not needed.

You must take this step yourself. The Bank of Spain only allows another person to request it with a notarised power of attorney in a public deed that expressly authorises it: private authorisations and the litigation power of attorney used in the insolvency proceedings are not accepted. We prepare the form ready for you to sign and send.

When reading it, bear 3 things in mind. The holder's report only itemises transactions with entities where your accumulated risk exceeds €1,000; for the rest, only the entity's name appears. It includes declarations from the last 5 years. And it is not updated instantly: the entity declares month-end balances before the 10th of the following month and the Bank of Spain publishes them on the 21st.

Both of them: the creditor that registered you and each bureau. The bureau and the creditor are joint controllers of the data, and it is the creditor who is responsible for ensuring the debt exists and is accurate. There is a precedent that explains why: in 2018 the Spanish Data Protection Agency (Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, AEPD) closed a complaint filed by a discharged debtor against ASNEF-Equifax, which had refused cancellation, because the bureau replied within the deadline and because removal had to be requested by the entity that reported the inclusion. Writing only to the bureau is the most common mistake.

The same applies to CIRBE. The Bank of Spain cannot alter what financial entities declare and recommends requesting rectification from the entity with which the debt is held. You therefore ask the creditor for 2 things: to report the discharge to the bureaus it previously notified, as ordered by the court, and to rectify or cancel what it declared to CIRBE.

No official form is required, but the written request must contain, in this order: your name, DNI or NIE, address and a means for receiving the reply; the court order, with its date, the Commercial Section that issued it and the case number, attaching the certified copy; each recorded transaction, with the entity's name, contract number and amount, stating that it appears among the discharged debts; the specific request, which is the erasure of the entry for the discharged debt or, at least, that the discharge be recorded; and the statutory 1-month deadline to reply. It must be signed and accompanied by a copy of your identity document.

While it is being resolved, you can ask the bureau for restriction of processing by contesting the accuracy of the data. In that case, anyone who checks your file is only informed that this circumstance exists, without being shown the debt. And send everything by a method that leaves proof of the content and date of receipt, such as registered legal mail (burofax): the AEPD will only process a subsequent complaint if you attach a copy of your request and of the reply, if any.

Each recipient has 1 month from receiving the request. They may extend it by a further 2 months due to the complexity or number of requests, but they must notify you within the first 1-month period. If they decide not to comply, they must explain why within that same 1-month period and inform you that you may lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority. Complying with these rights is free of charge.

A complaint to the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) is only processed if you first exercised the right before the data controller and they failed to reply in time or replied unsatisfactorily, and you must attach a copy of your request and their reply. It is submitted through the AEPD online portal or, without a digital certificate, in writing to the Agency at Edificio Cuzco IV, Paseo de la Castellana, 141, planta 9, 28046 Madrid. The AEPD has up to 3 months to admit it for processing and, when it concerns an unfulfilled right, up to 6 months from admission to issue a decision.

For CIRBE there is a specific channel before going to the AEPD. If the entity does not correct the record, you can ask the Bank of Spain to process the rectification or cancellation with the entity using form FDU-030: via the online portal with a digital certificate or Cl@ve, or without them, in person or by post. The entity must reply to you and to the Bank of Spain within a maximum of 15 working days, and in the meantime the Bank of Spain suspends all disclosure of those data to third parties. If the reply is negative, the suspension is extended for 2 months. This channel is only available for transactions that appear with their specific code on the report, meaning those from entities with more than €1,000 of accumulated risk.

If the entity neither rectifies nor replies within that period, you can file a complaint against it before the AEPD. This is not an unusual situation: in 2025 the Bank of Spain received more than 42,000 rectification requests, 30% more than the previous year, largely due to debt discharges.

In ASNEF and Badexcug, a debt may only remain listed while the default persists, up to a maximum of 5 years from the due date of the obligation. The 6-year period still mentioned on some websites comes from the previous law. With debt discharge, the debt is extinguished, and that is the legal ground for requesting removal without waiting for that maximum period to expire.

CIRBE retains its data for 10 years, but reports on natural persons only show declarations from the last 5 years. Furthermore, a discharged debt should not remain listed there as extinguished, but disappear altogether: the Bank of Spain explains that, following a discharge, it verifies that all affected transactions have been deleted so that they do not appear on any report of the holder.

There is also European case law. The Court of Justice of the European Union, in joined cases C-26/22 and C-64/22 (SCHUFA) of 7 December 2023, ruled that a private credit information agency cannot retain data on a debt discharge for longer than the public insolvency register; in the German case, the public register kept them for 6 months. Once that period has elapsed, the data subject has the right to erasure and the agency must delete the data as soon as possible. If a bureau were to keep an insolvency or discharge marker taken from the public register, that is the argument for demanding its deletion.

The court order's mandate only covers discharged debt. Debts that the law does not allow to be discharged remain enforceable and their creditors retain their rights of action: maintenance payments, civil liability arising from a crime, criminal fines and very serious administrative penalties, the portion of public-law debt exceeding the statutory cap, or secured debt within the limit of the special privilege. If they meet the legal requirements, they may remain listed. If you keep your home with its mortgage, that loan remains active and it is normal for CIRBE to continue showing it as a risk.

Nor does discharge release anyone who signed with you or on your behalf. Your guarantors, sureties, joint and several co-debtors and non-debtor mortgagors remain liable to the creditor and cannot invoke your discharge, so their listing as guarantors may continue. However, if the guarantor pays, they cannot claim it back from you, because their right of recourse is discharged just like the principal debt, unless it holds security in rem. Where marital community property (bienes gananciales) has not been liquidated, the discharge of community debts does not extend to your spouse unless they obtain discharge themselves.

If you guaranteed someone else's debts, the same rule applies as to all other debts: only what you listed and the court order identifies is covered. And, of course, debts you incur after the court order fall outside the discharge.

Managora handles this for you. If we conducted your insolvency proceedings, our procurador requests the certified copy of the order. We exercise your right of access before ASNEF and Experian, cross-check the entries against the list in the court order, send the formal demands to each creditor and each bureau, prepare form FDU-031 and, if needed, form FDU-030 ready for your signature, monitor the deadlines and, if anyone fails to reply, prepare the complaint to the AEPD. You can see the current fee on the service page.