Noelia Veiga Guerra
CRIMINAL LAW DIVISION
Within the framework of the preliminary issues hearing in the trial against the Pujol family, the defense teams have argued that the indictments do not individualize, with the required precision, the facts attributed to each defendant or the allegedly criminal financial transactions, preventing them from knowing exactly the object of the accusation.
This argument places at the forefront a debate of special legal relevance: the requirement that the indictment be specific as an essential condition of the accusatory principle and of the right of defense.
A. Constitutional and legal basis of the requirement of specificity in the accusation
The accusatory principle, which forms part of the guarantees of criminal proceedings recognized in Article 24 of the Spanish Constitution (hereinafter “CE”), requires that any person subject to criminal proceedings know precisely the facts attributed to them and be able to oppose them under conditions of full adversarial process.1
This requirement finds its immediate normative counterpart in Article 650 of the Spanish Criminal Procedure Act (hereinafter “LECrim”), which requires that the prosecutorial conclusions be “precise and numbered,” and describe the punishable acts, the specific participation attributed to the accused, and the circumstances relevant to the legal classification of their conduct.
On this basis, the Constitutional Court has emphasized that infringement of this mandate inevitably entails a double constitutional violation: the right to know the accusation (Art. 24.2 CE), since otherwise the accusation would effectively not exist; and, inevitably, the right not to suffer defenselessness (Art. 24.1 CE).2 Its case law confirms that without concrete facts there is no true accusation, because the defendant cannot refute what they do not know, including the legal classification proposed by the prosecution.3
The formal accusation thus constitutes the starting point of the adversarial debate: it makes it possible to know the arguments of the other party, to present one’s own before the judge, to indicate the factual and legal elements on which they are based, and to exercise full procedural activity.4
B. Case-law parameters for assessing lack of defense due to vagueness of the accusation
Starting from the constitutional and legal framework described above, case law has progressively specified the parameters that allow determination of when the lack of specificity in an indictment violates the right of defense:5
(i) First, it must be verified whether the indictment reveals functional inadequacy derived from its objective ambiguity; that is, whether it lacks the minimum degree of individualization required for the accused to know what they are accused of and why.
The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court has clarified that, although a minute exposition of every detail is not required, the indictment must be complete (including the factual elements that constitute the alleged offense and the circumstances affecting the defendant’s liability) and specific (allowing precise knowledge of the criminal conduct).6
(ii) It must also be verified whether that imprecision has resulted in real and effective defenselessness—namely, whether it has affected the defense’s ability to understand the scope of the reproach, prepare its strategy, or propose evidence.
(iii) Finally, it must be analyzed whether the lack of specificity has a structural impact on the conduct of the trial and the final decision. When the accusation does not establish a clear factual framework, the court’s own ability to define the object of evidence and properly assess the facts submitted for judgment is affected.
C. Procedural avenues to challenge insufficient specificity in the indictment
The appropriate procedural channel to challenge insufficient specificity in the indictment arises immediately after it is filed and before the opening of the oral trial, through the mechanisms provided in Spanish law to declare null procedural acts that violate essential procedural rules and cause
defenselessness.7
If the irregularity persists and a judgment is issued, the issue may be raised on appeal or cassation, alleging violation of the accusatory principle and the right of defense.8
Once the decision becomes final and ordinary remedies have been exhausted, the extraordinary incident for annulment of proceedings may be brought in cases where the violation of the fundamental right could not have been raised earlier.9
Ultimately, the constitutional appeal (recurso de amparo) before the Constitutional Court constitutes the subsidiary route to obtain protection under Article 24 CE when the violation derived from insufficient specificity in the indictment persists.
D. Consequences of upholding the claim: correction, rollback, or acquittal
The consequences of upholding the defect depend on the seriousness of the lack of specificity and on the possibility of repairing the harm suffered by the defense:
(i) When the accusation is correctable and the harm is not irreversible, its correction should be ordered before the oral trial.
(ii) When the imprecision has affected the preparation or conduct of the trial, or the definition of the object of evidence, the rollback of proceedings to the appropriate procedural stage may be ordered.
(iii) Exceptionally, acquittal may be ordered where the accusation is structurally unusable and it is not possible to reconstruct a valid procedural object without breaching guarantees.
Thus, in the Filesa case, the Supreme Court declared the indictment null because it lacked concrete facts and was unsuitable for allowing the exercise of the right of defense.10 In turn, in the Banco de Valencia case, the National High Court acquitted the defendants after finding that the accusation did not individualize the specific accounting entries alleged to be false, forcing the defense to reconstruct the accusation from a massive volume of documentation without a clearly delimited factual narrative.11
Footnotes (explanatory)
1. Article 6.3(a) and (b) of the European Convention on Human Rights similarly guarantee the right to be informed of the accusation and to have time and facilities to prepare a defense.
2. Constitutional Court Judgment 18/1989: establishes that lack of clarity in the accusation violates both the right to know the charges and the right not to suffer defenselessness.
3. Constitutional Court case law: without concrete facts, there is no real accusation because the defendant cannot challenge what is unknown.
4. The accusation structures the adversarial process: it defines what is debated and proven at trial.
5. Supreme Court Judgment 689/2020: systematizes criteria for determining when vagueness causes defenselessness.
6. Supreme Court case law: an indictment must be complete and specific, though not exhaustively detailed.
7. Arts. 238–240 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary: regulate nullity of procedural acts violating essential guarantees.
8. Arts. 851–852 LECrim: allow cassation for procedural defects and constitutional violations.
9. Art. 241 LOPJ: regulates the extraordinary incident for annulment of proceedings.
10. Filesa Case (1997): indictment annulled for lack of concrete factual description.
11. Banco de Valencia Case (2025): acquittal due to the prosecution’s failure to specify the allegedly false accounting entries.
