VALBUENA REDONDO v. SPAIN

FIFTH SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 32404/23
Santiago VALBUENA REDONDO
against Spain

The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 10 July 2025 as a Committee composed of:

 Andreas Zünd, President,
 María Elósegui,
 Mykola Gnatovskyy, judges,
and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 32404/23) against the Kingdom of Spain lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 17 August 2023 by a Spanish national, Mr Santiago Valbuena Redondo, who was born in 1960 and lives in Valladolid (“the applicant”) and was represented by Mr L. Valbuena Parro, residing in Valladolid;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1.  The case concerns the applicant’s request to receive compensation for the time spent in prison, following a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (“this Court”) finding a violation of his rights under Article 6 of the Convention (see Valbuena Redondo v. Spain, no. 21460/08, 13 December 2011) and the ensuing reopening of the applicant’s criminal case, which resulted in his conviction being quashed. The applicant was then unsuccessful in subsequent domestic proceedings in obtaining compensation for the time spent deprived of liberty.

2.  The facts of the case can be summarised as follows.

3.  On 1 September 2005, the applicant, who was the director of a company (VIMASCON S.L.), was acquitted of charges related to offences against the Public Treasury and Social Security by the Criminal Court no. 2 of Valladolid.

4.  On 20 January 2006, the aforementioned judgment was overturned on appeal (lodged by the Abogacía del Estado and the public prosecutor’s office), and the Audiencia Provincial of Valladolid found the applicant guilty, on the grounds that it considered it sufficiently proven that he had created a scheme to deliberately defraud the Public Treasury. That judgment was adopted without having held an oral hearing where the applicant’s alleged deliberate criminal conduct could have been heard. He was sentenced to three years of imprisonment and a fine of over EUR 4 million, as well as to compensate the Public Treasury with over EUR 1 million.

5.  The applicant’s subsequent appeals against his conviction and sentence were dismissed or declared inadmissible, following which he lodged an application with the Court.

6.  On 13 December 2011, the Court adopted a judgment finding a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention in its criminal limb on the grounds that the Audiencia Provincial of Valladolid had carried out a fresh assessment of the case on appeal, without hearing the applicant. The Court found that as the issues dealt with on appeal were essentially of a factual nature, the conviction of the applicant by the Audiencia Provincial after a change in the assessment of factors such as the existence of genuine economic damage to the public purse or the applicant’s fraudulent intent, without the applicant having had the opportunity to be heard personally and to contest them through adversarial examination in a public hearing, was not in accordance with the requirements of a fair trial as guaranteed by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (see Valbuena Redondo, cited above, § 39).The applicant was awarded EUR 8,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damages, and EUR 5,000 in respect of costs and expenses. The Court rejected the applicant’s just satisfaction claims in respect of pecuniary damage, considering that there was no causal link between the violation found and the alleged damage. It stated in this regard that it could not speculate what outcome the appellate proceedings would have had if a hearing had been held.

7.  On 22 February 2017 the Committee of Ministers decided to close the examination of the execution of several Court’s judgments finding a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention based on the lack of a public hearing before the courts of appeal. The Committee of Ministers took into account the information provided by the Government concerning the payment of the just satisfaction awarded and the adoption by Spain of provisions introducing in its legislation the possibility – already recognised in the practice of the highest national courts – for the applicants to obtain the review of final court decisions when the Court has found a violation of the Convention, as well as other general measures (see Resolution CM/ResDH(2017)69).

8.  According to the information in the file, the applicant had not been in pre-trial detention. Following his conviction by the court of appeal, he served his sentence in the form of imprisonment from 10 January 2008 to 12 December 2008 and in the form of overnight stays in prison from 15 December 2009 until 4 November 2010. He was released on parole on 4 November 2010 and his sentence was considered served on 2 April 2012.

9.  Following the Court’s judgment, the applicant introduced two actions for the annulment of the proceedings and an amparo appeal that were dismissed.

10.  In November 2015 he lodged an application for review before the Supreme Court under Section 954 of the Criminal Procedure Act (see paragraph 20 below), as applicable at the relevant time.

11.  On 22 February 2017, the Supreme Court adopted a judgment granting extraordinary review, in light of the Court’s judgment finding a violation of Article 6 of the Convention (see paragraph 6 above). The judgment stated that the object of the review proceedings was to “verify whether a new fact – in the present case, a judgment of the Court – was evidence that the applicant should not have been convicted” and affirmed “the answer is obvious: he should not have been convicted because his right to defend himself was breached”. It further held that it was not possible to bring the proceedings back to the stage of the hearing, to order a fresh one, as this was not foreseen by domestic law and, besides, would be contrary to the ne bis in idem principle. The Supreme Court declared null and void the judgment of the Audiencia Provincial; revoked all the rulings contained in the judgment, including the seizures; and ordered to inform the Tax Agency of the judgment for it to resume its investigation.

12.  On 16 February 2018, the applicant lodged a request for compensation for State liability based on miscarriage of justice (error judicial) before the Ministry of Justice. Since he did not obtain a reply from the Ministry, he subsequently lodged a claim for State liability before the administrative division of the Audiencia Nacional. He claimed that he should receive just satisfaction for (i) the time unduly spent in prison (a total amount of EUR 628,000); (ii) legal costs and expenses for his appeals (a total of EUR 267,665.78); (iii) EUR 50,550.53 in respect of interest on the sums seized by the Tax Agency and the Criminal Court (he had already obtained reimbursement of those sums, without interest); and (iv) compensation for the loss of value of stocks he had owned in the companies of which he had been a director and owner at the time when he had to enter prison, and which had been wound up after that.

13.  In the meantime, on 24 September 2019, the applicant received a reply from the Ministry of Justice, dismissing his request, on the grounds that his non-pecuniary damage had already been compensated by the EUR 8,000 award granted by the Court, which had also compensated some of his legal expenses (see paragraph 6 above). The authorities also rejected his claim in respect of the interests of the seized sums and of the loss of value of his stock options.

14.  On 16 February 2022, the Audiencia Nacional dismissed the applicant’s claim. It noted that, according to the applicable provisions (see paragraph 19 below), the mere revocation or annulment of a judgment did not imply in itself a right to compensation, and, in cases of miscarriage of justice, a previous judicial decision expressly recognising it was needed. Accordingly, not every acquittal judgment issued in the framework of review proceedings resulted in the acknowledgment of State financial liability. Furthermore, the Audiencia Nacional reiterated that a miscarriage of justice had been defined by the case-law as a “patent, clear, evident” mistake by a judge in its judicial function and was not equivalent to a merely wrongful decision.

In the present case, the Audiencia Nacional observed that the Supreme Court judgment of 22 February 2017 granting the review of the criminal proceedings against the applicant (see paragraph 11 above) had accepted that he had been convicted in violation of his procedural rights under the Convention, but had not expressly established that this had amounted to a miscarriage of justice. Moreover, the Audiencia Nacional considered that the Court’s case law on the need to personally and directly hear the applicants in order to make any factual assessment on appeal had been new at the time of the events, and that the limits between factual and legal considerations in the case at hand were not evident. The Audiencia Nacional considered that the existence of a miscarriage of justice meeting the requirements established by the domestic case law to be considered as such could not be inferred neither from the Court’s judgment nor from the Supreme Court’s judgment; nor was there a judgment explicitly declaring its existence. As a result, it could not grant the applicant any compensation on those grounds. In addition, the Audiencia Nacional observed that the applicant had not been in pre-trial detention and then acquitted; he had been deprived of his liberty following a final convicting judgment. Moreover, as – in its view – established in the Court’s judgment (see paragraph 6 above), there was no causal link between his alleged pecuniary damage and the violation of his procedural rights during the criminal proceedings. Lastly, he had already been compensated for non-pecuniary damages by the Court, as well as for some of the costs and expenses.

15.  The applicant lodged an appeal on points of law, which was declared inadmissible by the Supreme Court, in a summary decision (providencia) based on an absence of objective legal significance (interés casacional objetivo).

16.  The applicant lodged an amparo appeal with the Constitutional Court, alleging violations of the right to fair proceedings and presumption of innocence and the right not to be discriminated against. He emphasised the domestic court’s failure to redress the violation of his rights found by the Court in its judgment of 13 December 2011. The applicant also complained that the fact that the domestic courts had not taken the necessary measures to execute the Court’s decision amounted to a discriminatory treatment, by comparison with other applicants whose rights had been found to have been violated by the Court (referring to the case of Del Río Prada v. Spain [GC], no. 42750/09, ECHR 2013, after which the domestic courts had taken immediate measures to execute the judgment). Lastly, the applicant claimed that the principle nulla poena sine lege had been violated in his case, arguing that the domestic courts had breached several domestic law provisions when ruling against his claims.

17.  On 19 May 2019, the Constitutional Court declared the applicant’s amparo appeal inadmissible, on the grounds that it did not have constitutional relevance.

RELEVANT LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND PRACTICE

18.  The Spanish Constitution provides, where relevant:

Article 121

“Damages caused by miscarriage of justice (error judicial) as well as those arising from the malfunctioning of the Administration of Justice shall give rise to a right to compensation by the State, in accordance with the law”.

19.  The relevant provisions of Organic Law no. 6/85 of 1 July 1985 on the Judiciary state as follows:

On the State liability for the functioning of the Administration of Justice

Section 292

“1. Damage caused to any property or rights by miscarriage of justice (error judicial), as well as that resulting from the abnormal functioning of the Administration of Justice, shall entitle all injured parties to compensation at the expense of the State, except in cases of force majeure, in accordance with the provisions of this Title.

2. In any case, the alleged harm must be actual, economically assessable and individualised in relation to a person or group of persons.

3. The mere revocation or annulment of judgments shall not in itself give rise to a right to compensation”.

Section 293

“1. A claim for compensation on the ground of miscarriage of justice (error judicial) must be preceded by a judicial decision expressly recognising the miscarriage. This prior decision may result directly from a judgment given on review. ...

2. Both in the case of a declared judicial miscarriage and in the case of damage caused by the malfunctioning of the Administration of Justice, the interested party shall address his request for compensation directly to the Ministry of Justice, and the request shall be processed in accordance with the rules governing the State’s financial liability. A contentious-administrative appeal may be lodged against the decision. The right to claim compensation shall expire one year after the day on which it could have been exercised....”

Section 294

“1. Those who, after having been remanded in custody, are acquitted, or when the proceedings have been discontinued, shall be entitled to compensation, provided that they have suffered prejudice.

2. The amount of the compensation shall be fixed according to the time of deprivation of liberty and the personal and family consequences that have occurred.

3. The request for compensation shall be processed in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 2 of the previous Section”.

20.  The relevant provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act, as applicable in the applicant’s case, read as follows:

Section 954

“An application for review may be lodged against final judgments in the following cases:

...

4. When, after the delivery of a judgment, new facts or new elements of evidence come to light of such a nature as to establish the innocence of the convicted person.”

The relevant provisions were amended by Act 41/2015, of 5 October 2015 (in force after 12 December 2015) to include the possibility of review following a judgment of the Court, adding the following:

Section 954

“3. Application may be made for a review of a final judgment where the European Court of Human Rights has held that the judgment was adopted in violation of a right recognised by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Protocols thereto, as long as the violation, on account of its nature and severity, entailed effects that persisted and could not be remedied in any other way than by a re-examination of the case by the courts.

In such cases, the application for review may only be made by a person who has standing to bring such an action and who has been an applicant before the European Court of Human Rights. The application must be made within one year of the judgment of the Court becoming final ....”

This amendment was not applicable in the applicant’s case in accordance with the transitional provisions of that law.

21.  The Spanish Supreme Court has developed ample doctrine on miscarriage of justice. Although it has not been cited by the applicant, the relevant extracts of judgment no. 1484/2019, of the Special Chamber, of 6 May 2019 contains a relevant summary of it:

“SECOND - Necessary preconditions for a claim of miscarriage of justice to succeed.

This Court has reiterated that in order for the existence of a miscarriage of justice to be established, it is necessary to be faced with a manifest and obvious error in the ‘establishment of the facts or in the interpretation or application of the law’. ...

The ... procedure to obtain the judicial declaration of the existence of a miscarriage of justice is limited, in such a way that not even the rightness or wrongness of the decision to which the error is imputed can be assessed; it only concerns whether that decision was adopted within the limits of logic and reasonableness in the application of the facts and in the interpretation of the law...

 The reiterated doctrine on the nature and limits of the miscarriage of justice process is summarised as follows:

(i) only a gross, evident and unjustified error can give rise to the declaration of a miscarriage of justice;

(ii) a miscarriage of justice, provided for by Section 293 of the Institutional Law on the Judiciary as a consequence of the mandate contained in Article 121 of the Spanish Constitution, is not configured as a third instance or as a claudicant motion on points of law, so that it can only be found when the concerned court has acted openly outside the legal channels, and cannot be used as a basis for attacking conclusions which are not illogical or irrational;

(iii) a miscarriage of justice is a manifest and obvious error in the establishment of the facts or in the interpretation or application of the law;

(iv) the miscarriage of justice must arise from an unjust or erroneous judicial decision, vitiated by a gross, patent, unquestionable and incontestable error, which has led to illogical, irrational, grotesque or absurd legal or factual conclusions, which break the harmony of the legal order;

(v) there is no miscarriage of justice when the court upholds a rational and reasonable criterion within the rules of legal hermeneutics, nor when it is a question of interpretation of the rule which, rightly or wrongly, follows a logical process;

(vi) not every possible error can classified as a miscarriage of justice; this classification must be reserved for special qualified cases in which it is apparent that the judge has been inattentive, either by contradicting the obvious or applying the law on the basis of non-existent rules, because the miscarriage of justice must ultimately be, in sum, obvious, undisputed and incontestable, and even blatant; and

(vii) the declaration of a miscarriage of justice does not aim at correcting an error of a judicial decision, but rather, by means of the procedure set out in Section 292 and developed in Section 293 of the Institutional Law of the Judiciary, it aims at obtaining compensation for the damage caused by a judicial decision vitiated by an evident disregard by the judge of indisputable data, which provokes an absurd decision that breaks the harmony of the legal order.”

COMPLAINTS

22.  The applicant complained under Article 5 § 5 of the Convention of a violation of his right to receive compensation for the time he spent in prison in light of the fact that in 2017 his conviction was declared null and void by the domestic courts taking into consideration the Court’s judgment of 13 December 2011. Thus, he was entitled to compensation for having been convicted under irregular conditions and without adequate procedural safeguards.

23.  He moreover complained under Article 6 § 1 of a violation of his right to fair proceedings, with regard to the domestic courts’ refusal to grant him compensation. He argued that the opportunity to obtain compensation for a miscarriage of justice (error judicial) was a crucial aspect of the right to a fair trial and denying it without adequate justification would undermine such a right. He considered, in particular, that while the judgment of 22 February 2017 granting extraordinary review of the criminal proceedings (see paragraph 11 above) did not explicitly mention that there had been a miscarriage of justice, its findings were sufficient to recognise that such a miscarriage had taken place, and therefore, to grant him compensation. He considered that to find otherwise was an excessively restrictive and formalistic interpretation of the legal regime which deprived him of his legitimate right to be compensated for the damage arising from an unjust conviction.

24.  Relying on Article 13, the applicant further argued that the responding State had failed to provide an effective remedy at the national level to redress the violation of his rights, despite the decisions of the Court and the Supreme Court acknowledging – in his view – the existence of a miscarriage of justice.

25.  Lastly, the applicant reiterated the same claims under Article 14 of the Convention, further arguing that other applicants in similar situations might receive compensation for miscarriage of justice while in his case it was refused.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

26.  The Court notes at the outset that the application is undoubtedly connected with the execution of the Court’s judgment of 13 December 2011. However, it concerns a situation distinct from that examined in that judgment and contains relevant new information relating to issues undecided by that judgment. In the present case the “new issue” that the Court has authority to examine concerns the applicant’s claims, as set out above, in relation to the compensation proceedings he lodged following the quashing of the Audiencia Provincial judgment by the Supreme Court. Accordingly, the Court is not prevented by Article 46 of the Convention from examining the applicant’s new complaints concerning the compensation proceedings (see, mutatis mutandis, Serrano Contreras v. Spain (no. 2), no. 2236/19, §§ 25-26, 26 October 2021).

27.  Furthermore, the Court notes that the complaints are not based on the review proceedings, in which the applicant’s claims were upheld (see paragraph 11 above), but on the compensation proceedings. Those proceedings did not involve a reopening of the criminal proceedings against the applicant (see, as regards the applicability of Article 6 to remedies concerning the reopening of proceedings, Moreira Ferreira v. Portugal (no. 2) [GC], no. 19867/12, §§ 60-67, 11 July 2017). In the circumstances of the present case, the Court does not find it necessary to examine the applicability of the civil limb of Article 6 as the related complaints are in any event inadmissible for the following reasons.

28.  The Court observes that the applicant’s complaints under Article 6 are limited to the interpretation of domestic law made by the domestic courts in the compensation proceedings concerning the alleged miscarriage of justice.

In this connection, the Court reiterates that its only duty, in accordance with Article 19 of the Convention, is to ensure the observance of the engagements undertaken by the States Parties to the Convention. In particular, it is not competent to deal with an application alleging that errors of law or fact have been committed by domestic courts, except where it considers that such errors might have involved a possible violation of any of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention. The Court should not act as a court of fourth instance and will not therefore question under Article 6 § 1 the judgment of the national courts, unless their findings can be regarded as arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable (see López Ribalda and Others v. Spain [GC], nos. 1874/13 and 8567/13, § 149, 17 October 2019).

The Court notes in this regard that the applicant had the benefit of adversarial proceedings and that at the various stages of those proceedings he was able to submit the arguments he considered relevant to his case. The factual and legal reasons for the Audiencia Nacional decision dismissing his claim were set out at length and cannot be considered as arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable (see, mutatis mutandis, García Ruiz v. Spain [GC], no. 30544/96, § 29, ECHR 1999-I).

The Court further recalls that Article 6 § 2 of the Convention does not guarantee a person whose criminal conviction has been quashed a right to compensation for a miscarriage of justice (see Nealon and Hallam v. the United Kingdom [GC], nos. 32483/19 and 35049/19, § 164 and 172, 11 June 2024).

It follows that this part of the application is manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 and must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.

29.  In relation to the complaint under Article 5 § 5, the Court reiterates that this provision is complied with where it is possible to apply for compensation in respect of a deprivation of liberty implemented in conditions contrary to paragraphs 1, 2, 3 or 4. The right to compensation set forth in paragraph 5 therefore presupposes that a violation of one of the other paragraphs has been established, either by a domestic authority or by the Court (see Kaboulov v. Ukraine, no. 41015/04, § 157, 19 November 2009).

30.  In the present case, no such breach of any of the first four paragraphs of Article 5 has been established by the domestic courts or by the Court: the applicant was only imprisoned after his conviction within criminal proceedings became final. In view of that finding, the Court concludes that Article 5 § 5 is not applicable to the facts of the present case. It follows that the applicant’s complaint under Article 5 § 5 is incompatible ratione materiae with the provisions of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4.

31.  The applicant reiterates the same arguments under Article 14, further adding that other individuals might receive compensation for miscarriage of justice. The applicant has not provided any arguments to sustain that the alleged difference in treatment was based on an identifiable characteristic, or “status”, capable of amounting to discrimination within the meaning of Article 14 (Molla Sali v. Greece [GC], no. 20452/14, §§ 133-34, 19 December 2018). However, even accepting that the existence of divergent decisions could raise an issue under Article 6, the applicant’s argument remains speculative, and he has not submitted any documents to sustain his assertions.

It follows that this complaint is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.

32.  Lastly, concerning the complaint under Article 13, inasmuch as it can be considered as a separate complaint, the Court, in view of the above conclusions, is of the opinion that in the circumstances of the present case the applicant did not have any arguable grievance in terms of the Convention and that Article 13 does not apply (see Walter v. Italy (dec.), no. 18059/06, 11 July 2006).

It follows that this complaint is incompatible ratione materiae with the provisions of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4.

33.  It follows that the remaining complaints must also be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 11 September 2025.

 Martina Keller Andreas Zünd
 Deputy Registrar President