Types of contracts in Spain
Spanish society is increasingly subject to activities that generate damage, such as
- Motor vehicle traffic
- Air navigation.
- The exploitation of nuclear energy, etc.
In addition, there is the damage that can be generated by the activities carried out by professionals such as medicine, construction, architecture, etc. without forgetting the commission of crimes in which there is damage to the integrity of people or things.
Contact now an expert in Law of Torts from our WeLex Law and Economics firm for any legal and fiscal question.
In each and every one of the structures described, professional and specialised legal and tax advice can be decisive. If you plan to hire or have hired the delivery of goods or services, do not hesitate to contact our law firm in Marbella to assure your obligations and rights regarding the contract you are planning, or if in the execution of the contract there are breaches either by you or by the person with whom you have contracted.
It is Book IV that deals with obligations and contracts in Spain, in which it devotes its first two titles to general provisions on obligations and contracts, regulating from its third title the following:
NON-CONTRACTUAL LIABILITY
Non-contractual liability as defined in articles 1089 «Obligations arise from the law, from contracts and quasi-contracts and from wrongful acts and omissions or any kind of fault or negligence» and articles 1092 and 1093 concerning obligations arising from tort, and also those arising from acts or omissions involving fault or negligence not punishable by law. This is how the obligations that arise from a legal relationship between persons who are not previously bound by a contractual relationship, as a result of acts or omissions that are not punishable by law and that are attributable to one of them as a result of fault or negligence, are configured. For the derivation of this responsibility, an action by the author is required, as well as the production of a result and a cause-effect relationship between the action or omission and the harmful result, and these damages must be economically evaluated.
Within this group we can find both damages and losses that occur when a criminal act is committed, those produced by the liability of the public administration in its normal or abnormal operation or those produced within the civil field between individuals, in private law.
In other entries of this website you can find information on civil liability arising from crime or liability of public administration, focusing on these lines in the liability between individuals in the civil code.
Our civil law system does not comprise strict liability, i.e. without any fault or negligence on the part of the subject, but includes situations where the proof of this fault or negligence is blurred. Thus, we can distinguish between liability for one’s own acts, liability for the acts of others, liability for damage caused by animals and liability for damage caused by inanimate things.
Regarding liability for one’s own actions, Article 1902 states that the action or omission that causes damage to another through fault or negligence is obliged to repair the damage caused. It requires a culpable act or omission, a harmful result and a causal relationship between them.
With regard to the responsibility for outside events, we find the responsibility for the facts carried out by the people whom we are obligated to respond for, the responsibility of the parents, of the guardian, of the employers, the responsibility of the teachers regarding the minors, all of them approaching the concept of strict liability, without realizing that responsibility.
We can also include damages caused by animals, being the owner liable even if they escape or go astray, or the owner of a hunting estate, who must compensate the owners of neighbouring estates.
Finally, with regard to liability for damage, the owner of a building is liable for the ruin of all or part of it, as is liability for damage caused by industrial activities of a dangerous nature or by things falling from a house or a flat.
We will not enter here into the distinction between the different damages, emerging, dismissed or the moral damage, because they transcend to the expository purposes of these pages. Finally, we would like to point out that not only can this liability be found in the aforementioned laws, but also in legal relationships arising from other types of activities, regulated in other laws of our system, such as the case of damages caused by air navigation, damages caused by nuclear energy, liability arising from hunting accidents, liability for damages caused to honour, personal and family privacy and one’s own image, or liability for defective products, or the very widespread and extensive liability for damages caused by the circulation of motor vehicles and mopeds.
