The cliché says that when justice is too slow, it stops being fair. In Barcelona, justice is slowing down due to the lack of personnel and the avalanche of cases that enter the courts. The time between when a matter enters the court and is resolved is one and a half years and can be extended up to three years in civil lawsuits such as traffic accidents or debt claims.
During 2022, more cases entered (19,215) and fewer were resolved (14,091). “That more cases enter and we solve less means an increase in the resolution time of each case. Before a lawsuit took about six months to be resolved in the court of first instance and another six in which the Court resolved the appeal if there was one. Now in the Hearing it takes us a year to resolve, so the total resolution period from when someone files a civil claim has been extended to a year and a half", explained the president of the Provincial Court of Barcelona, Antonio Recio, in the presentation of the 2022 memory of this court. A divorce takes about six months in court but if an appeal is filed through the Hearing, the time is extended up to a year.
One of the reasons to which the president of the Court attributes the delay is the lack of staff. In 2019, the Ministry of Justice allowed the creation of positions for temporary reinforcement magistrates and this allowed a good rhythm to be maintained. However, this endowment disappeared in 2022 and this overloaded the work of the magistrates of the civil sections. A magistrate of a civil section should receive 200 cases a year at his desk, while in 2022 the magistrates of the Court of Barcelona received 300, according to the scale of workloads published by the ministry itself in 2018. "That means that the cases civil cases, which can be cases of resolution of inheritances, debt claims, compensation for a traffic accident, evictions, defects in a purchase contract, take longer to resolve," said the president while demanding that the ministry make an "effort budget” to increase the staff of civil magistrates of the Court.
The criminal jurisdiction shows, for its part, "some stabilization" and even in 2022 the pendency rate dropped slightly, according to Recio, who assured that most sections respond within an adequate period.
