Article 41.1 of Law 39/2015 on Common Administrative Procedure requires administrative notifications to be made by means that record the dispatch, the receipt, their dates and the identity of the person who receives them, and a letter sent by ordinary post records none of those things. A traffic fine that reaches you unregistered has not been validly notified and, as long as you do not react to it, neither the twenty-day period to pay with the discount nor the period to file submissions is running. That letter does tell you the file exists, and the moment you pay or file submissions the notification is validated under article 40.3 of the same law and the deadlines count from that day. What you have to decide is what to do with it, and that depends on who sent it, what it says and how much is at stake.
The DGT (Dirección General de Tráfico) and many town councils send that first letter unregistered because it costs less than a letter with acknowledgement of receipt and because a share of recipients pay with the discount, which validates the notification and closes the file. Article 41.6 of Law 39/2015 allows these informational notices and makes clear they are not notifications; what it does not allow is counting deadlines from them.
How the DGT or the council must notify under articles 89 to 92 of the Road Traffic Act
Royal Legislative Decree 6/2015, the consolidated Road Traffic Act, sets an order. The report is notified on the spot (article 89) and, if the officer could not stop the vehicle, the report must state the specific reason why. If there was no delivery in person, notification is made at the Dirección Electrónica Vial (article 90), the DEV, which is compulsory for legal persons and voluntary for individuals. Anyone without a DEV receives it at the address given in the proceedings or, failing that, at the address held in the records of the Jefatura Central de Tráfico (article 91). If nobody is home, this is recorded and a second attempt is made within the following three days at a different time, and article 42.2 of Law 39/2015 adds that one attempt must be before three in the afternoon and the other after it, at least three hours apart. Only when both fail is the notification published on the Tablón Edictal Único of the Official State Gazette (article 92), and twenty calendar days after publication it is deemed served.
| Method of notification | Legal basis | When it is deemed served |
|---|---|---|
| On the spot, by the officer | Art. 89 Road Traffic Act | At the moment of delivery |
| Dirección Electrónica Vial | Art. 90 Road Traffic Act and art. 43 Law 39/2015 | On access, or ten calendar days after it is made available if you do not access it |
| At the address, by registered post or process server | Art. 91 Road Traffic Act and art. 42 Law 39/2015 | On signed delivery or refusal; after two failed attempts the step is deemed complete and it goes to the edictal board |
| Tablón Edictal Único of the BOE | Art. 92 Road Traffic Act and art. 44 Law 39/2015 | Twenty calendar days after publication |
| Letter by ordinary post | None | Never on its own; only if you pay or appeal (art. 40.3 Law 39/2015) |
Each of those methods leaves a document in the file, the signed receipt, the record of the two attempts, the DEV access log or the publication. Ordinary post leaves none, and the burden of proving that you were notified lies with the administration.
Notice, informational letter and notification, the difference that decides the deadline
Before deciding anything, read what has actually arrived. A notice says a notification has been made available at the DEV or at the council’s electronic office, or simply states that a report exists under a file number. A notification contains what article 40.2 of Law 39/2015 requires, the full text of the act, whether it exhausts the administrative route, the appeals available, the body to lodge them with and the deadline. The slip the officer or the blue-zone attendant leaves on the windscreen is not a notification either; the report is notified to the registered keeper afterwards.
If you have a DEV, because you signed up or because the vehicle is registered to a company, the valid notification is there and the ten-calendar-day period of article 43 of Law 39/2015 runs even if you never read the letter, which was only the notice. If you have no DEV, the ordinary letter is a badly made attempt at notification and the valid one is still to come.
Paying with the 50 per cent discount or filing submissions, what you gain and what you give up
Article 93 of the Road Traffic Act gives twenty calendar days from notification of the report to pay with a 50 per cent reduction or to file submissions and propose evidence. If you pay, the procedure becomes the abbreviated one and article 94 sets the consequences, the reduction, the waiver of submissions, termination without an express decision and finality of the penalty from the day of payment, against which only a contentious-administrative appeal within two months remains. The reduction does not affect points, which are lost anyway. If you neither pay nor file, article 95 provides that for minor offences and serious offences without loss of points the report itself acts as the decision and the penalty is enforceable thirty calendar days after notification; offences that deduct points require an express decision.
With an ordinary letter in front of you, if the amount is low, no points are involved and you do not dispute the facts, paying with the reduction within twenty days of receiving it is the reasonable choice, the administration accepts it and a lawyer is not worth the cost. If the fine deducts points, the amount is high, you were not driving or there is something to dispute in the report, payment closes the door and the defective notification becomes an advantage, because the administration’s calendar is not yours. Leaving the letter in a drawer is the worst option, because the administration will treat the report as notified on whatever date it says and you will have to prove afterwards that it was not.
Submissions, appeal for reconsideration and judicial review, where the defective notification comes in
In the ordinary procedure, submissions go in within the twenty days of article 95 and, once the penalty decision is issued, an appeal for reconsideration lies within one month from the day after its notification (article 96 of the Road Traffic Act and articles 123 and 124 of Law 39/2015). It is optional, it does not suspend enforcement unless suspension is requested and granted, and it is deemed dismissed if not decided within a month. After that comes the contentious-administrative appeal, with two months.
The defective notification works at two moments. While the file is live, it makes the deadline run from the day you actually learned of the act, which is what article 40.3 says, and not from the date the administration put the letter in the post. Once the penalty is treated as final, it supports the argument that it never was, because an act that was not validly notified does not become final with the passage of time. The Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court have repeatedly held that edictal publication is the last resort and that the administration must first exhaust reasonable means of locating the person, including the addresses held in its own records. Which defects to raise and which documents in the file prove them is the lawyer’s work, and it is what separates an appeal that succeeds from a complaint dismissed in one paragraph.
Tablón Edictal Único, change of address and the day the attachment arrives
The chain that leads from a fine to an attachment without your knowledge is lawful when done properly. Two failed attempts at the address held by the DGT, publication on the edictal board, twenty calendar days and the report is deemed notified; another twenty without payment or submissions and, for offences without points, the report becomes the decision; thirty days more and it is enforceable. Once the voluntary payment period ends, the debt goes into enforced collection, handled by the Tax Agency for DGT fines and by the council’s or the provincial Diputación’s collection office for municipal ones, with surcharges of 5, 10 or 20 per cent under article 28 of the General Tax Act, plus interest, and at the end an attachment order on your bank account or salary. For many people that order is the first news of the fine.
What decides matters then is whether each link was made as the law requires, whether the two attempts were made at the right address and at the right times, whether the administration had another address available in the municipal register or its own files before going to the board, whether the publication existed and on what date. Anyone who moved recently, or who has just bought a home in Galicia from abroad (I wrote here about what to check before the deposit), usually still has the previous address on file at the DGT, and that is almost always where the problem starts. Against the enforcement order the grounds of opposition are limited by article 167.3 of the General Tax Act, one of them is lack of notification, and the deadline is one month. When someone comes to the firm with the attachment order, the first thing we do is request the file and rebuild that chain date by date, because that determines whether to attack the enforcement, the penalty or both; that is what the contact page is for.
Limitation and lapse, when a badly notified fine can no longer be collected
Article 112 of the Road Traffic Act sets the limitation period for minor offences at three months and for serious and very serious ones at six, from the day of the facts. The period is interrupted by any administrative action of which the person reported is aware or which is aimed at establishing their identity or address with external effect, and it runs again if the procedure stalls for more than a month for reasons not attributable to that person. The same article causes the procedure to lapse if no decision is issued within a year of its start and sets the limitation period for final fines at four years.
A penalty never validly notified is not final, so those four years have not even begun, but the three or six months for the offence and the one-year lapse do run, and that is where many old fines that resurface as attachments die. One caution. The ordinary letter is not a valid notification, but if you acknowledge in writing that you received it on a specific date, the administration can argue that from that day you were aware of an action and that limitation was interrupted. What you state about that letter in a written submission has to be weighed.
Municipal blue-zone or camera fine and DGT fine, what changes
Sanctioning powers lie with the mayor on urban roads and with the provincial head of traffic elsewhere (article 84), with the same notification rules for both. The practice differs. Councils may notify through the DEV, if they have joined it, or through their own electronic office, so the DEV may be empty while the municipal notification waits on another platform; blue-zone fines are often processed by a concession company whose slip is not the report; and in many Galician municipalities enforced collection is run by the Diputación, which is who signs the attachment. Knowing which administration signs the letter is the first step, because the file has to be requested from it.
Loss of points, the driver who must be identified and article 11
When the report is not notified on the spot, the registered keeper, the long-term lessee or the habitual driver must identify the driver responsible if the administration requires it (article 11 of the Road Traffic Act). That requirement arrives by notification, often preceded by another ordinary letter, and failing to answer it is a very serious offence that article 80 punishes with double the original fine if the offence was minor and triple if it was serious or very serious. A minor fine of 100 euros becomes 200 and a serious one of 200 becomes 600 for not answering in time, and the company that owns the vehicle, with a compulsory DEV, usually finds out late.
Points are deducted when the penalty is final, and with the reduced payment it is final from payment. If you discover when checking your balance that you lost points for a fine that was never validly notified, that finality is open to challenge for the same reasons as the attachment. With a zero balance the licence loses its validity, and driving in that state is the offence of article 384 of the Criminal Code, punished with three to six months’ imprisonment, a fine of twelve to twenty-four months or thirty-one to ninety days of community service, with a criminal record that later has to be cancelled. That is the point at which a fine becomes a matter of criminal defence, as with drink-driving, and at which reviewing how each point-deducting penalty was notified stops being a question of money.
The postmarked envelope and the address on file at the DGT
Keep the letter and the envelope, because the postmark is the only proof of the dispatch date, and note the day you received it. If you have a DEV or the vehicle belongs to a company, log in to it and to the electronic office of whoever signs the letter and check whether a notification has been made available and since when, because that deadline does run. Check the address held by the DGT and update it if it is not current, which is how you stop the next notification ending up on the edictal board. Do not pay through a link received by text message or email; the DGT does not collect fines that way and such a message is a scam built like bank impersonation. And do not pay the paper fine just to be rid of it if points or anything disputable are involved, because payment is irreversible in the administrative route.
Frequently asked questions
If the letter arrived by ordinary post, does the deadline to pay with the discount or to file submissions run? From when?
Legally no, because the twenty-calendar-day period of article 93 of the Road Traffic Act runs from a valid notification and ordinary post is not one. If you pay with the reduction within twenty days of the letter, the administration accepts it and the payment validates the notification. If you intend to dispute it, the deadline runs from when you act or receive the valid notification.
What do I do if the first news of the fine is an attachment or an enforcement surcharge because I was never properly notified?
Request the file and review how the report and the penalty were notified, because lack of notification is one of the limited grounds for opposing enforcement and the deadline to do so is one month. If the penalty was never validly notified, it is not final and can be appealed as well. That review should be done with a lawyer, because the deadline is short and the grounds are limited.
The file, the address and the calendar, where we start
In a consultation about a fine that arrived by ordinary post, or that surfaced as an attachment, the first thing we look at is the complete file of the sanctioning administration, because that is where the receipts, the records of attempts and the publications are, or are not, and that absence is the evidence. Then the address held by the DGT on each date, the points balance and the limitation and lapse calendar of article 112. With that we decide whether it pays to settle with the reduction, file submissions, appeal the penalty or oppose enforcement, and within what deadline, which is short on every route. If the fine is the prelude to a loss of licence validity, we provide the criminal defence from the same office. You can write to us through the contact page or call +34 677 841 007; we reply as soon as we are able.