Recovering an unpaid debt in Spain from South Tenerife: the monitorio in 2026 — the letter first, twenty days, what it costs and the European shortcut

Three files opened on our desk in Costa Adeje this summer that had nothing in common except the word unpaid. A German builder's invoice of €8,400 for a terrace in Adeje, signed off in March and ignored since. A loan of €12,000 between two friends in Los Cristianos, made by bank transfer with a two-line message and never returned. A community of owners in Corralejo whose largest debtor lives in Manchester. Each of them can be turned into a court order in Spain without a trial, through a procedure most foreign residents have heard of and few have used: the proceso monitorio, the order-for-payment procedure. Since April 2025 it has a step before it and, since 2024, a higher ceiling after it, and the numbers — twenty days, one month, €2,000, €15,000 — decide what happens. This is the procedure as the law reads in September 2026 and as the courts of the island run it, with the costs, the interest, the timelines the Judiciary itself publishes and the European shortcut that a creditor in one EU country can use against a debtor in another. Quotations are in Spanish with the reading in English.

What the monitorio is — and which debts qualify

The monitorio is a request to a court to order a debtor to pay, without a trial, on the strength of paper. Its scope is wide: «quien pretenda de otro el pago de deuda dineraria de cualquier importe, líquida, determinada, vencida y exigible» — anyone claiming from another the payment of a money debt of any amount that is liquid, determined, due and enforceable — may use it, provided the debt is proved by documents «que aparezcan firmados por el deudor o con su sello, impronta o marca» — bearing the debtor's signature, stamp or mark — or by «facturas, albaranes de entrega, certificaciones, telegramas, telefax o cualesquiera otros documentos que, aun unilateralmente creados por el acreedor, sean de los que habitualmente documentan los créditos y deudas en relaciones de la clase que aparezca existente entre acreedor y deudor» (Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil, art. 812.1). A signed contract, a signed delivery note, a WhatsApp in which the debtor acknowledges the amount, an invoice of the kind that trade always issues: each of them opens the door. The Act adds two cases of its own: a debt shown by a document together with commercial papers proving «una relación anterior duradera» — an earlier lasting relationship — and unpaid community fees proved by the community's certificate of the debt (art. 812.2). The last one is the road our sister firm's administrators walk every month; we describe it below.

The ceiling that once existed is gone: since 2011 the monitorio has no upper limit. What the amount still decides is what happens if the debtor fights, and we come to that.

Before you file: the letter the law now requires

Since 3 April 2025 a civil claim in Spain is admitted only if the claimant first made a documented attempt to settle — a medio adecuado de solución de controversias, a MASC. The requirement covers «todos los procesos declarativos del libro II y en los procesos especiales del libro IV de la Ley 1/2000» (Ley Orgánica 1/2025, art. 5.2), and the monitorio is a special process of Book IV: it is subject. The exceptions the same article lists — fundamental rights, child-protection measures, filiation, summary possession, ruinous works, international child abduction, the bill-of-exchange procedure — do not include it. Two instruments are expressly spared: «Tampoco será preciso acudir a un medio adecuado de solución de controversias para presentar la petición de requerimiento europeo de pago conforme al Reglamento (CE) n.º 1896/2006 … o solicitar el inicio de un proceso europeo de escasa cuantía, conforme al Reglamento (CE) n.º 861/2007» (art. 5.3) — the European order for payment and the European small-claims procedure, both of which we come to in the cross-border section.

In practice the attempt is a lawyer's letter: a specific, reasoned demand for the same debt you will later claim, sent so that receipt and content can be proved, with a window for the debtor to answer. Thirty calendar days of silence spend the requirement, and the attempt is good for a year. Our guide to the requirement sets out the clocks, the paper and the appeal courts' emerging criteria; the one point to carry from it here is that the letter is not a formality. A court may deny costs to a party who refused a settlement means without just cause (Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil, art. 394.1), and a debtor who reads a serious letter often pays before any court is involved — which is the cheapest outcome this piece describes.

The petition: which court, no lawyer, one form

The petition goes to the court of the debtor, not the creditor: «Será exclusivamente competente para el proceso monitorio el Juzgado de Primera Instancia del domicilio o residencia del deudor o, si no fueren conocidos, el del lugar en que el deudor pudiera ser hallado» (art. 813). For community-fee claims the court of the property is also competent, at the creditor's choice. Submission clauses in a contract do not apply. Since the 2025 reorganisation of the courts the first-instance courts of each judicial district are civil sections of a single Tribunal de Instancia, constituted in three waves during 2025 (Ley Orgánica 1/2025, disposición transitoria primera); for a debtor living in Adeje the district is Arona, for one in Corralejo it is Puerto del Rosario, and the petition names the tribunal of the district.

The petition itself is short: the identity of the debtor, the addresses of both parties, «el origen y cuantía de la deuda» — the origin and amount of the debt — and the documents, on paper or through the courts' electronic office (art. 814.1). And the sentence that makes the procedure what it is: «Para la presentación de la petición inicial del procedimiento monitorio no será preciso valerse de procurador y abogado» (art. 814.2) — no court agent and no lawyer are needed to file it. The Civil Procedure Act repeats the exemption in its general rules on representation and defence (arts. 23.2 and 31.2). A creditor may file alone, and many do; whether that is wise is a question of what happens twenty days later.

One more filter applies before the court writes to the debtor. If the documents do not support the amount, the judge may propose a lower figure, which the creditor accepts or rejects within ten days; and if the debt comes from a contract between a business and a consumer, the judge checks the clauses it rests on for unfairness before any order is issued, and may cut the amount accordingly (art. 815.3). Late-payment penalties in a consumer contract are the usual casualty.

Twenty days: the three things a debtor can do

If the papers pass, the court clerk — the letrado de la Administración de Justicia — orders the debtor «para que, en el plazo de veinte días, pague al peticionario, acreditándolo ante el tribunal, o comparezca ante éste y alegue de forma fundada y motivada, en escrito de oposición, las razones por las que, a su entender, no debe, en todo o en parte, la cantidad reclamada» — to pay within twenty days, proving it to the court, or to appear and set out in a reasoned written opposition why the amount is not owed, in whole or in part (art. 815.1). The order must reach the debtor personally, under the ordinary rules of service; the Act allows service by public notice only for community-fee claims (arts. 815.1 and 815.2). A debtor who cannot be found stops the procedure: the court closes the file and the creditor may file again where the debtor is located (art. 813). That is why the address in the petition is the single most important line in it, and why a creditor chasing a debtor abroad reads the cross-border section below first.

The debtor pays. The file is closed as soon as payment is proved (art. 817). The creditor recovers the principal and any interest claimed; the costs of the letter and the petition are, in practice, the creditor's own unless the debtor agrees to bear them.

The debtor does nothing. «Si el deudor no atendiere el requerimiento de pago o no compareciere, el Letrado de la Administración de Justicia dictará decreto dando por terminado el proceso monitorio y dará traslado al acreedor para que inste el despacho de ejecución, bastando para ello con la mera solicitud» (art. 816.1): the clerk ends the monitorio by decree and the creditor asks for enforcement on a simple request. From the enforcement order the debt bears procedural interest — the legal rate plus two points (arts. 816.2 and 576) — and the enforcement follows the rules for judgments: attachment of bank accounts, wages, rents, vehicles and, at the end of the road, the property. Neither side may reopen the amount in a later ordinary trial (art. 816.2). The enforcement of an unopposed monitorio needs a lawyer and a court agent when the amount exceeds €2,000 (art. 539.1).

The debtor opposes. A written opposition within the twenty days, signed by a lawyer and a court agent where the amount requires them, sends the dispute to trial (art. 818.1). Which trial depends on the figure. Up to the ceiling of the juicio verbal — €15,000 since the 2024 reform (art. 250.2) — the clerk converts the monitorio into a verbal proceeding by decree: the creditor may answer the opposition in writing within ten days, both sides then have five days to propose evidence, and the case runs to a hearing and a judgment (art. 818.2). Above €15,000 the creditor must file an ordinary claim within one month of receiving the opposition; if the month passes without it, «dictará decreto sobreseyendo las actuaciones y condenando en costas al acreedor» — the case is dismissed and the creditor pays the costs (art. 818.2). Unpaid rent goes to the verbal proceeding whatever the amount (art. 818.3). The judgment that ends either trial has the force of res judicata; the debtor cannot try the same defence twice.

The practical lesson of the three doors: the monitorio is quick against a debtor who does not fight, and it is the opening move, not the whole game, against one who does. A €9,000 invoice met with a two-page opposition becomes a verbal trial with lawyers on both sides; a €40,000 loan met with opposition becomes an ordinary trial that the creditor must launch within a month or lose with costs.

What it costs, and what it earns

Court fees. Natural persons pay no court fee at all (Ley 10/2012, art. 4.2.a). A company pays a fixed fee of €100 for a monitorio, and nothing when the claim does not exceed €2,000 (arts. 4.1.c and 7.1); the variable part of the fee was struck down by the Constitutional Court in 2016, and the fee paid for the monitorio is deducted if an ordinary trial follows (art. 7.1).

Lawyer and court agent. Optional for the petition, as we said; obligatory for the opposition and the trial when the amount exceeds €2,000 (arts. 23.2 and 31.2) and for the enforcement of an unopposed monitorio above the same figure (art. 539.1). Our own practice is to draft the MASC letter and the petition for the client whatever the amount, because the petition is the document the whole later trial is built on, and to charge the trial phase only if there is one.

Interest. Three rates matter, and they are different numbers. Between businesses, or between a business and a public body, the statutory late-payment rate is the European Central Bank's rate plus eight points, published every six months: 10.15 % for the first half of 2026 and 10.40 % for the second (Resolución de 30 de junio de 2026, Boletín Oficial del Estado of 1 July 2026). On €8,400 that is about €2.40 a day. Between private persons, without an agreed rate, the debt bears the legal interest of money, 3.25 % in 2026 under the extended budget rules. And from the enforcement order every debt bears the legal rate plus two points — 5.25 % — until it is paid (art. 576).

Costs. In the trial that follows an opposition the loser pays the winner's costs, capped at a third of the amount in dispute for the fees of lawyers not bound by a tariff (art. 394). A creditor who refused a settlement attempt without just cause may win and still be denied costs (art. 394.1); a creditor who never received an answer to a proper letter has the argument the other way round. In the enforcement of an unopposed monitorio the costs of the enforcement fall on the debtor without a separate order, though the creditor advances them until they are settled (art. 539.2).

The timelines: what the law fixes and what the courts add

The law fixes the short clocks — twenty days to pay or oppose, ten and five days in the verbal conversion, one month to file the ordinary claim — and the courts add the long ones. The General Council of the Judiciary publishes an estimate of the average duration of the cases each kind of court closes. For the Canary Islands in 2025 the estimate was 6.7 months for a Spanish monitorio, 11.2 months for a verbal proceeding of the ordinary kind and 13.4 months for an ordinary trial; the enforcement of judicial titles, which is where a contested debt finally turns into money, averaged 49 months — a figure that measures how long enforcement files stay open while instalments are collected, not how long the first attachment takes (Consejo General del Poder Judicial, estimación de tiempos medios, Juzgados de Primera Instancia, published April 2026). The European order for payment, rarely used in the islands, closed in an average of 37 months in the same year. Read the figures as the Judiciary itself says they should be read: averages of closed files, not a forecast for yours; a monitorio against a debtor who pays on the first order can end in three months, and one against a debtor who hides can take a year to serve.

The debtor abroad, the creditor abroad

A creditor in Spain, a debtor in another EU country. The European order for payment exists for exactly this case: a cross-border money claim within the Union, Denmark excepted under the Regulation. In Spain it belongs to the first-instance court, is filed on the Regulation's form A «sin necesidad de aportar documentación alguna» — without attaching any document, unless the judge asks for a consumer contract to check its clauses — and the clerk issues the order within thirty days of the petition (Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil, disposición final vigésima tercera, 1, 2 and 6). The debtor has thirty days from service to oppose on form F, counted under the European rules, weekends included (DF 23.ª, 7). Without opposition the clerk declares the order enforceable on form G, and it is enforced in the other member states without any further declaration, under the Regulation (DF 23.ª, 8). With opposition, the case continues under the national procedure of the competent court unless the creditor asked in advance that it end there. Two advantages the Spanish monitorio does not have: no prior settlement attempt is required (Ley Orgánica 1/2025, art. 5.3), and the order travels. One caution: which country's court is competent follows the European jurisdiction rules, and for a private debtor that is usually the court of the debtor's home state — the form is the same everywhere, the court is not always ours. For claims of up to €5,000 the European small-claims procedure offers the same passport with a written trial (DF 24.ª).

A creditor in Spain, a debtor in the United Kingdom, Switzerland or the United States. The European instruments are not available; the Spanish monitorio is, and its weakness is service: the order must reach the debtor personally, abroad, through the channels of the Hague Service Convention or the bilateral routes, which adds months. Once a Spanish judgment or an enforceable monitorio exists, its recognition abroad follows the treaties in force with that country — for England and Wales, in broad terms, the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention since mid-2025 — and is a second procedure with its own lawyer. For a debtor with assets in Spain — a flat, a Spanish bank account, a rental income — the sensible strategy is the reverse: enforce here, against the assets here, and let the debtor's home country wait.

A creditor abroad, a debtor in Spain. The mirror image. A German company owed by a Tenerife hotel, an Italian owner owed by a tenant in Corralejo, may file the Spanish monitorio through a Spanish lawyer, or the European order from their own court and enforce it here. The Spanish route needs the settlement letter first; the European route does not.

Community fees: the monitorio with its own rules

Unpaid community fees are the island's most frequent monitorio, and the Act gives them three special rules: the community's own certificate of the debt is enough to open the procedure (art. 812.2.2.º), the court of the property is competent as well as the debtor's (art. 813), and service may be made at the flat and, failing that, by public notice, because the owner must give the community an address in Spain (art. 815.2). The owner in Manchester who ignores the community's letters is the textbook case. Our sister firm's administrators explain the community side — the certificate, the meeting's authorisation and the surcharges — in their piece on unpaid fees; we take the file when the debtor opposes or when the community needs the enforcement run against a property or a foreign bank account.

If you are the one who received the order

The twenty days count from the day the order is served on you, and nothing is gained by silence: an unanswered order becomes an enforceable title without a trial, and the enforcement adds interest at 5.25 % and the costs. Three questions decide what to do. Is the amount right? A creditor who claims more than is owed can be met with a partial opposition, and the acknowledged part is dealt with separately (art. 818.1). Is the debt a consumer debt with a penalty clause, a commission or a default rate that looks abusive? The judge should have checked, and the opposition may raise it. Can you pay at all? A debtor with several creditors and no way of paying has a different road — the second-chance procedure our debt-relief guide describes — and using the twenty days to negotiate a schedule with the creditor is often better than either paying under protest or opposing for its own sake. Opposition above €2,000 needs a lawyer; a lawyer's letter within the twenty days often ends in an agreement that a decree would not have given either side.

Ten steps from Costa Adeje

1. Gather the paper. The contract, invoice, delivery note, transfer receipt or message in which the debt and the debtor appear; the Act accepts documents «cualquiera que sea su forma y clase o el soporte físico».
2. Fix the amount. Principal, agreed interest or the statutory rate, and the date from which interest runs; the petition claims a liquid figure, not an estimate.
3. Find the debtor's address. Domicile or residence in Spain; the petition is filed in that district, and a wrong address costs months.
4. Send the settlement letter. A reasoned demand for the same debt, by a channel that proves receipt and content; diary thirty days.
5. Wait the thirty days, then a year at most. Silence spends the requirement; a reply opens a negotiation with its own clocks.
6. File the petition. On the official form or through a lawyer, with the documents and the proof of the settlement attempt.
7. Twenty days. Payment closes the file; silence gives you a title; opposition gives you a trial.
8. Choose the trial's route. Up to €15,000 the verbal proceeding follows by decree; above it, file the ordinary claim within one month or lose with costs.
9. Enforce. Ask for enforcement on the decree; identify accounts, wages, rents and property; above €2,000, with a lawyer and a court agent.
10. Think about the border before step 1. A debtor in another EU country may be better served by the European order; a debtor outside the Union is served slowly, so start with the assets in Spain.

The monitorio does not decide who is right. It asks the debtor whether they intend to argue — and turns silence into a title.

Our litigation team in Costa Adeje and Corralejo drafts the settlement letter and the petition, runs the trial that follows an opposition in Spanish and in the client's language, and enforces the decree against the assets that exist. Read how we work in litigation and arbitration, or tell us about your debt; the first consultation is a paid review of the papers, and it usually decides whether the letter alone will do.

Common questions

Do I need a lawyer to claim an unpaid invoice in Spain?

Not to file the monitorio: the Civil Procedure Act says expressly that the initial petition needs neither lawyer nor court agent. You do need both if the debtor opposes and the amount exceeds €2,000, and to enforce an unopposed order above the same figure. The settlement letter the law requires before the petition is not a legal-aid matter either, but its content decides whether the court admits the claim and who pays the costs, which is why most creditors have it drafted.

How long does a monitorio take in Tenerife?

The law fixes twenty days for the debtor to pay or oppose once served. The Judiciary's own estimate of the average duration of monitorios closed in the Canary Islands in 2025 was 6.7 months; a verbal trial after an opposition averaged 11.2 months and an ordinary trial 13.4. The enforcement phase against a debtor who does not pay voluntarily is the long part, and a debtor who cannot be served stops the clock altogether.

What interest can I claim on an unpaid debt in Spain in 2026?

Between businesses, the statutory late-payment rate: 10.15 % for the first half of 2026 and 10.40 % from 1 July 2026, unless the contract sets another rate. Between private persons without an agreed rate, the legal interest of money, 3.25 % in 2026. From the day a court orders enforcement, every debt bears the legal rate plus two points, 5.25 %, until it is paid.

Can I use the monitorio against a debtor who lives abroad?

Yes, but the order must be served on the debtor personally, which means a request through international channels and months of delay. For a debtor in another EU country the European order for payment is usually the better tool: one form, no documents, no prior settlement attempt, thirty days to oppose, and an order enforceable across the Union. For a debtor in the United Kingdom or outside Europe, enforcing in Spain against Spanish assets is the practical first move.

What happens if the debtor opposes?

The monitorio ends and a trial begins. Up to €15,000 the clerk converts the case into a verbal proceeding by decree, with ten days for the creditor to answer the opposition and five days to propose evidence; above €15,000 the creditor must file an ordinary claim within one month or the case is dismissed with costs against the creditor. The judgment that ends the trial is final between the parties on that debt.

This article is general information about Spanish civil procedure as it stands at the date of publication, not legal advice for your specific situation. Interest rates are published every six months and the courts' average durations every year; have the figures and the strategy checked against your papers before the first letter goes out.