What expenses do the costs include?

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Carrying out a legal process involves a series of expenses. We must differentiate between procedural expenses and procedural costs, which are not the same thing.

Article 241 of the Civil Procedure Act distinguishes between trial expenses and costs:

Procedural expenses are those financial disbursements that have a direct or immediate origin with the existence of a process.
Procedural costs or court costs are all the expenses required to carry out a trial, these expenses cover everything from the beginning of the process to its completion. That is, they refer to the payment of a series of concepts that we will list below and arise during the processing of a judicial procedure.
Today we are going to focus on the costs that are generated in a trial.

Article 241 of the Civil Procedure Act lists what will be considered costs:

Fees of the lawyer and attorney , when their intervention is mandatory.
Insertion of announcements or edicts that must be published during the course of the process.
Expert fees .
Copies, certifications , notes, testimonies and similar documents that spain phone numbers must be requested in accordance with the Law, except those requested by the court from public records and protocols, which will be free of charge.
Customs duties that must be paid as a result of actions necessary for the development of the process.
The fee for the exercise of jurisdictional power, when mandatory.
Who has to pay the costs in a trial?
The answer is in article 241.1 of the Civil Procedure Law:

«1. Except as provided in the Legal Aid Act, each party shall pay the costs and expenses of the proceedings incurred at its instance as they arise.»


The general rule is that each party must pay the costs incurred in defending its interests in the trial. However, if the judgment that ends the proceedings orders the opposing party to pay the costs, the winner may request the Court to pay the costs that it has had to bear in relation to the legal proceedings.

That is to say, the payment of costs may be imposed on those whose claims have been rejected . The winner must pay the costs incurred by the processing of the procedure.

Beginning of maturity
The general rule in our system is that each party must pay its own expenses, but as we have seen there is also the principle of maturity : whoever wins the process has the right to demand payment of the expenses incurred.

In order to apply this principle, the judgment must expressly condemn the opposing party to pay the court costs. If there is no such express recognition, it is not possible to claim costs.

Nor may legal costs be claimed, despite having been expressly recognised in the judgment when the other party is a beneficiary of free legal aid .


Judgments may also contain a phrase such as " without making any special ruling on costs " or " each party shall bear the costs incurred at its request ." This means that each party shall bear its own costs regardless of whether it has won or lost the case.