Hiring a Lawyer in Spain as a Non-Resident: What to Check Before You Pay Anyone

Every practising lawyer in Spain is listed in a public register that you can check yourself, from a kitchen table in Guildford or Gouda, in about two minutes. So before you pay anyone a single euro for legal work here, look them up. That is the short version of this page. The long version shows you exactly where to look and how, what Spanish law says a lawyer must put in writing before your money moves, how the fees work, and how to sign a power of attorney for Spain without leaving your country.

My name is Daniel Bertomeu and I work alongside my father Juan Bertomeu, a lawyer with offices in Moraira and Dénia, here on the Costa Blanca, since 1991. We are independent lawyers and tax advisors, and we deal almost only with international clients. Juan is the lawyer of the family, ICALI number 4643. My side is the tax and the paperwork.

And further down I am going to ask you to run the check on us first. That section is the reason this page exists.

How to check somebody is really a lawyer in Spain

Start with what the word means, because in Spain it is not loose. Only somebody incorporated into a bar association as a practising member may call themselves abogado or abogada. The professional title and the bar membership are both legally indispensable. No membership, no lawyer, whatever the website says.

And the check is public. The statute that governs Spanish lawyers requires the national census of practising lawyers to be published on the web, with each lawyer's bar association stated. The register is called the Censo General de Letrados, it is kept by the Consejo General de la Abogacía Española, the national council of the Spanish bars, and it is built from the lists the bar associations themselves send in.

So here is the process, in the order I would do it for my own mother:

1. Ask for three things: the lawyer's full name, their bar association, and their membership number. This is not a cheeky request. A Spanish lawyer is required to state their bar and their number in everything they do, so anyone bristling at the question has already told you something.
2. Open the register. You can search by name and surname, by membership number, and by bar association. If you want to read what the census is before you use it, the council keeps a plain description of the service.
3. Match all three. The name, the bar, the number. If what you were told and what the register says disagree, stop right there.
4. If anything looks off, ask the bar association directly. This is not my paranoia. The council's own help page answers the question "how can I know if a lawyer really is one", says the census data can occasionally lag behind, and points you to the bar association for confirmation. The double check comes recommended by the profession itself.

One thing before we go on. Foreigners here are forever being helped by somebody whose exact job is unclear, and a lawyer, a gestor and a tax adviser are three different things in Spain. If you are not sure which one you are talking to, we wrote a separate page on exactly that.

Do not take our word for it

Now run that process on us.

Open the register and search for Juan Bertomeu at the bar of Alicante, membership number 4643. The Alicante bar is the ICALI, the provincial bar association for the whole province, which takes in Dénia, Jávea, Moraira, Calpe and the rest of this coast. As we write this, the ICALI does not run a separate public search of its own; its site points you to the national census for lookups, and you can always contact the bar itself to confirm what the census shows.

If the register did not show my father, you should not hire us, and nothing else on this page would matter. It does. He has been practising on this coast since 1991.

Here is the part I would actually like you to keep. Any firm that is what it claims to be can write the paragraph above. Named people, a bar, a number, and an open invitation to check. So before you engage anyone, us included, run their name through the same register, and send this page to whoever shares the decision with you so they can run it too. Two minutes per firm. Honestly, it is the cheapest due diligence you will ever do on a Spanish purchase.

Everything else we say about ourselves is on our about page, written so you can verify it rather than admire it.

What being colegiado actually does for you

Bar membership is not a club badge. It is what plugs a lawyer into a disciplinary system with real teeth, and that system is your protection when something goes wrong.

Some examples of what it means in practice. A lawyer may never retain your documentation, whatever the dispute; they can keep a copy, nothing more. Keeping money that belongs to a client is classed as a very serious offence, and the sanctions in that category run up to expulsion from the profession. Refusing or dragging their feet when you demand an account of your money is an offence as well. And breaching the duties of identification and information that I cover below is a serious offence, carrying suspension from practice of up to a year or a fine of up to 10,000 euros.

On insurance, I will tell you only what the rules actually say. Spanish disciplinary rules treat practising without the professional indemnity cover required by law as a serious offence, and for firms organised as professional companies, operating without a valid insurance policy in place is classed as a very serious one.

None of that framework exists around an unregistered adviser with a nice website. That is the difference the register makes, and it is why the two minutes matter.

The town on the letterhead is not a legal question

A worry I hear constantly from foreign buyers: the property is in one town, the lawyer is in another, is that allowed? Yes. In Spain, membership of one bar association, the one where the lawyer has their professional address, is enough to practise in the whole country. And no bar can demand extra registrations, notifications or payments from a lawyer coming in from another province. You do not need one lawyer per town, or per province, or per region.

What the letterhead town does tell you about is local knowledge, which is real and worth having: town hall practice, planning quirks, how the local land registry likes things done. Those you want in the team, not on a certificate. Our own patch runs from Oliva down to Alicante, with the bulk of the work between Oliva and Benidorm, and we take matters across the provinces of Alicante and Valencia. If your question is really about one particular town, we keep local sites with the detail that only matters there, for Moraira, for Dénia and for Jávea.

And if what you actually need is simply an English speaking lawyer around Dénia or Moraira, there is a shorter page on that.

What they must give you in writing before you pay

Spanish law is unusually specific about this, and almost no foreign client knows it.

Before starting work, a lawyer must give you a set package of information, preferably in a hoja de encargo, an engagement letter, and the bars publish model forms precisely so nobody can claim letters are not the done thing here. The letter covers the fees and the costs of the work, and if a court case is involved it must also warn you what a costs order against you could mean and roughly how much.

You are owed the identity details in full as well: name, tax number, bar association and membership number, professional address, and a way to contact them that includes an electronic one. If it is a firm, its registered details too. If several lawyers will touch your file, you are entitled to know who they all are and which one is directing the matter. You must be kept informed as the matter runs. And there is a duty I wish more clients knew about: the lawyer must give you an honest view of whether your case is viable, and steer you away from litigation with no foundation rather than billing you for it.

One more, about money on account. It is normal practice here for work to start with an advance, the provisión de fondos, and the figure belongs in the engagement letter where you can see it. The protection runs your way: money you hand over as an advance is earmarked, and a lawyer who offsets fees against client funds that were never given as an advance, without your consent, commits a disciplinary offence.

How Spanish legal fees actually work

Freely agreed between you and the lawyer. That is the whole system. There is no official scale, and the bar associations are actually prohibited from publishing fee scales or recommendations; the one narrow exception the law allows is criteria used when courts assess costs, which has nothing to do with your quote. So if anyone justifies a price to you as "the bar tariff", that line should worry you rather than reassure you.

Two practical consequences. First, compare quotes like for like: lawyers' fees carry Spanish VAT at the general rate of 21 percent, so make sure any figure you are given either includes VAT or says plainly that it does not. Second, a detailed invoice is not a favour, it is an obligation, itemised concept by concept, fees and expenses.

So you can see what honest quoting looks like, here is ours. An initial consultation is from 150 euros plus VAT, and conveyancing is from 1,600 euros plus VAT for properties up to 400,000 euros, with 0.25 percent on anything above that. The rest is on our pricing page, stated the same way.

Red flags, in plain English

The backbone of this section is one rule from the statute that governs Spanish lawyers, and I think it is the single most useful thing a non-resident can know about buying legal help online. Before an online legal service is provided, and in any case before it asks you for any payment at all, the identity of the individual lawyer behind it, together with their bar association, must be communicated to you. Not a brand. A person, with a bar and a number you can put through the register above. And online legal advice counts as full practice of the profession here, same statute, same rules as the office visit.

With that in your pocket, the flags:

• No named lawyer anywhere. A site selling Spanish legal services where you cannot find who the lawyer is or which bar they belong to. Ask, in writing, before paying. The law entitles you to that answer before any money moves, and silence is an answer too.
• "That is the bar tariff." The bars cannot set tariffs. Whoever says this is either confused or hoping you are.
• A guaranteed outcome. A lawyer's advertising may not promise results that do not depend exclusively on the lawyer's own work, and in property, tax and court matters almost nothing does.
• "Specialists" with nothing underneath. Claims of specialisation must be backed by real qualifications or practice. Ask what backs it, and match the name against the register.
• Nothing in writing. No engagement letter, no written figures, no mention of VAT. You have just read what you are owed.
• Your originals held back. Never lawful, dispute or no dispute.

None of this is about any firm in particular. It is a checklist, and a decent firm passes it without noticing.

Signing a power of attorney without flying to Spain

Most of our clients are not in Spain when their purchase, sale or inheritance actually happens. The tool that makes that work is the poder notarial, the power of attorney, and you can grant one without leaving your country. Two routes.

The usual route: sign before a notary where you live, then have the document apostilled. The apostille is the single certificate created by a Hague convention precisely to replace the old, slow legalisation chain, and it is issued in the country where the document originates, so a British power is apostilled in the UK, not in Spain. The Spanish consulate in London puts it in plain terms for British clients: a power signed before a UK notary works in Spain once it carries the apostille and is translated by an official translator of the country where it will be used. Spain's notarial profession says the same. Whether your own country is in the apostille system you can check on the convention's official page; the contracting parties run to well over a hundred, so for British, German and Dutch clients this is the everyday route.

The consular route: powers can also be granted at a Spanish consulate, by Spaniards and foreigners alike, and personal appearance on the day of signing is always required, so this route means travelling to the consulate instead of to Spain. One quirk the London consulate itself flags in bold: a power granted at the consulate is not valid for use in the United Kingdom, so if you need one document that works in both countries, notary plus apostille is the one.

Which route to use, what the power should cover and how tightly to draft it depends on your matter, and honestly, the drafting is where a power earns its money: wide enough to complete, narrow enough to be safe. That part is worked out with the file open, not from a page like this one.

How we work, if you want us

We do this from Moraira and Dénia, in person if you are here, fully remotely with a power of attorney if you are not, which for most of our clients is the normal way. Juan has been at it on this coast since 1991, and the register will tell you exactly that.

If you are mid-purchase, our guide to buying property in Spain as a non-resident walks the whole process end to end, including where the lawyer fits in it. If what landed on you is an inheritance, start with inheriting Spanish property as a non-resident instead.

FAQ

How do I check if a Spanish lawyer is really registered?

Search the Censo General de Letrados, the public national register kept by the Consejo General de la Abogacía Española, at censo.abogacia.es. You can search by name and surname, by membership number and by bar association. Ask the lawyer for their name, bar and number first, since Spanish lawyers must state both in everything they do, then check that all three match. If anything looks off, the council's own guidance is to confirm directly with the bar association, which for the Alicante province is the ICALI.

Do I need a lawyer from the same province as my Spanish property?

No. Membership of one bar association, the one covering the lawyer's professional address, entitles a Spanish lawyer to practise in the whole country, and no bar may demand extra registrations or payments from a lawyer based elsewhere. Local knowledge of the town hall and the land registry is worth having, but that is a practical question, not a legal requirement.

Is there an official tariff for lawyers' fees in Spain?

No. Fees are freely agreed between client and lawyer, and bar associations are prohibited from issuing fee scales or recommendations; the only exception is criteria used for court costs assessments. Fees carry VAT at the general rate of 21 percent, so check whether a quote includes it. You are entitled to the figures in writing before work starts, in an engagement letter, and to a detailed itemised invoice at the end.

Can I sign a power of attorney for Spain without travelling?

Yes. Sign before a notary in your own country, have the document apostilled there under the Hague convention, and have it translated by an official translator. The Spanish consulate in London confirms this route in plain terms for documents signed before a UK notary. The alternative is signing at a Spanish consulate, which always requires personal appearance on the day, and the London consulate warns that consular powers are not valid for use in the United Kingdom itself.

What must an online legal service tell me before charging me?

Under the statute governing Spanish lawyers, an online legal service must communicate the identity of the individual lawyer providing it, together with their bar association, before the service is provided and in any case before requesting any payment. Online legal advice counts as full practice of the profession, under the same rules as an office visit. So if a website selling Spanish legal help will not name its lawyer, ask in writing before paying, and treat silence as your answer.

A quick legal note before you go

One last thing, and Juan makes me say it, because this is a law firm and a law firm has to say it. This page is general information, current as of August 2026. The rules governing Spanish lawyers, fees and powers of attorney can change, and official registers and pages move. It is not legal advice for your matter, and reading it does not make you our client. Before you engage anyone or sign a power, check the register yourself and get advice on your own case.

Where these figures come from

Every rule and figure above comes from these sources:

About this article

Written by Daniel Bertomeu, tax adviser, AEDAF #06838 and APAFCV #3080, for Expat Abogados. The legal points in this article were reviewed by Juan Bertomeu, abogado, ICALI #4643, in practice since 1991 in Moraira and Dénia.