When a creditor takes a twenty-year-old debt to court, the court does not check whether it is time-barred, it simply orders you to pay or to oppose within twenty working days, and if you stay silent it issues a decree on which the creditor can seek attachment of your assets. A loan, credit or card debt from 2006, with no judgment and no claims that interrupted the period, has been time-barred since the end of December 2020 at the latest, but that only helps you if you plead it in writing and in time. The fact that it still appears on the Bank of Spain’s CIRBE does not keep it alive, and Circular 1/2026, which enters into force on 19 November, does not erase it by itself.
The order for payment procedure (monitorio) is handled by the court clerk (letrado de la Administración de Justicia), not by the judge. The clerk checks that the application comes with a document giving the appearance of a debt, as required by article 812 of the Civil Procedure Act, and orders the demand to be served at your address (article 815). The judge only steps in of his or her own motion to review possible unfair terms when a business claims against a consumer. Nobody examines the age of the debt, because limitation is a defence that the debtor must raise and that no court applies on its own initiative. If the twenty days pass with neither payment nor opposition, the decree under article 816 closes the procedure and opens enforcement.
A debt from 2006, 2008 or 2016, the period that applies to each
Personal actions with no special period, which covers most loans, consumer credit, cards and invoices, are now time-barred after five years (article 1964.2 of the Civil Code). Until 7 October 2015 the period was fifteen years. Law 42/2015 shortened it, and its fifth transitional provision settled what happened to debts that already existed by referring to article 1939 of the Civil Code. The Supreme Court has interpreted that reference in the sense set out in the table, together with the other periods that come up in these claims.
| Type of debt | Period | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Loan, credit, card or invoice due from 7 October 2015 | 5 years | Article 1964.2 of the Civil Code |
| The same debt, due between 7 October 2005 and 7 October 2015 | Until the end of December 2020 | Fifth transitional provision of Law 42/2015 |
| The same debt, due before 7 October 2005 | 15 years | Previous wording of article 1964 of the Civil Code |
| Interest, rent and other periodic payments | 5 years | Article 1966 of the Civil Code |
| Mortgage action | 20 years | Article 1964.1 of the Civil Code |
| Debt owed to the Tax Agency or to Social Security | 4 years | General Tax Act and General Social Security Act |
The date in the second row was originally 7 October 2020, five years after the reform entered into force, and it moved to the end of December because of the suspension of time limits during the state of alarm. Applied to the most common queries, a debt from 20 years ago (2006) or 18 years ago (2008) became time-barred in December 2020, one from 25 years ago (2001) did so in 2016 on reaching fifteen years, and one from 10 years ago (2016) completed its five years between 2021 and early 2022. The period runs from the default or the due date, which is when the debt could first be claimed (article 1969), and not from the signing of the contract. The whole calculation has one condition, that there has been no interruption and no judgment in the meantime.
Chained claims, what keeps a twenty-year-old debt alive
Article 1973 of the Civil Code interrupts limitation through a court claim, through an out-of-court demand by the creditor and through any act by which the debtor acknowledges the debt. Each interruption restarts the whole period, and if it took place after October 2015 the new period is five years. For a debt from 2006 to be enforceable in November 2026, the creditor needs a chain of interruptions with no gap longer than the period, the last of them within the past five years. A demand sent once the debt was already time-barred does not revive it.
Proving that chain falls to whoever relies on it, which is the creditor. The out-of-court demand must have reached the debtor, or at least have been sent to the known address in such a way that the failure to receive it is attributable to the debtor. Ordinary letters without proof of delivery and calls of which no record remains are hard to prove, and those sent to an address you left years ago are argued case by case. When the claimant is a fund that bought the portfolio from a bank, it may not hold the complete file, and calling itself the new owner is not enough either, because it must prove that your specific debt was among those assigned.
Acknowledgment is the route by which debtors damage their own position. A part payment, even a token one, signing a payment plan or an email admitting that you owe the money all interrupt the period if the debt is still alive. If it was already time-barred, they may be read as a waiver of the limitation already gained, which article 1935 of the Civil Code also allows tacitly. Until you know where the debt stands, pay nothing, sign nothing and do not admit it over the phone, where the conversation may be recorded. You can ask in writing for the contract, the amount and the origin of the claim to be identified, because asking is not acknowledging.
With a judgment or an unanswered order for payment, the calculation changes
The above applies to a debt that never went to court. If there was a judgment, or an order for payment procedure that ended by decree because nobody opposed it, what matters is no longer the limitation of the debt. The creditor has five years from the date the decision became final to file the enforcement claim, and after that the enforcement action lapses (article 518 of the Civil Procedure Act). Once filed in time, enforcement does not lapse through inactivity and only ends with full payment (article 570). Proceedings opened in 2009 and dormant since then can be reactivated today with an asset search and an attachment of wages, because a creditor holding a court title has the means to collect even when the debtor claims to own nothing.
Some people discover in this way that the old debt had proceedings behind it, served at a previous address. It is worth knowing before replying to anyone. If service was defective there are remedies, but they are exceptional and carry very short time limits of their own from the moment the decision becomes known. At the firm we first check whether such proceedings exist and what stage they are at, because that determines whether the defence is limitation, lapse of enforcement or nullity of the proceedings, and we do so within our civil law practice.
The collection letter and the court demand call for different responses
A letter, a text message or a call from a debt collection company opens no procedural time limit and allows nothing to be attached. Nor do they oblige you to reply. Keep the envelope, the letter and the date of receipt, because that communication is what the creditor will later present as an out-of-court demand. Since April 2025, Organic Law 1/2025 requires the creditor to attempt an appropriate means of dispute resolution before suing, so a formal proposal to negotiate may be the step before the claim and deserves more attention than a phone call.
The court demand is a different matter. The twenty working days run from the day you receive it, and the opposition must be a reasoned written pleading raising limitation, payment or whatever applies (articles 815 and 818). If the claim exceeds 2,000 euros, that pleading must be signed by a lawyer and a court representative (procurador). Once opposition is filed, the case continues as an oral trial (juicio verbal) if the amount does not exceed 15,000 euros and as ordinary proceedings if it does, and that is where the creditor will have to prove the debt and its interruptions. Refusing to accept service stops nothing, because the law treats refusal as delivery. If you let the time limit pass, in the subsequent enforcement you will no longer be able to argue that the debt was time-barred, because the grounds of opposition against a court title are very few (article 556).
The debt you already paid, the receipt against the new creditor
Payment extinguishes the obligation (article 1156 of the Civil Code) and, if it was made by cheque, promissory note or another instrument, only once it was actually cashed (article 1170). Whoever claims to have paid must prove it, so here the burden is yours. The transfer receipt, the loan cancellation certificate, the payment letter and the statements all serve. Article 1110 helps when you have kept only the last receipt, because the receipt for the final instalment, issued without reservation by the creditor, extinguishes the obligation as regards the earlier ones. If you have kept nothing, ask your bank for the transactions of those dates, although records of operations this old are not always retained.
A claim for a debt already paid may stem from a portfolio assignment in which the debt travelled without the record of payment. Payment is raised in the same way as limitation, in writing and within the twenty days if there is an order for payment procedure. The case of a debt you never took on is different, where someone applied for the credit with your details after phishing or a bank impersonation scam, and what is in dispute is that there was never a contract.
Why it is still on the CIRBE and what changes on 19 November with Circular 1/2026
The Bank of Spain’s Central Credit Register (CIRBE) is not a defaulters file. It is a public register, governed by articles 59 to 69 of Law 44/2002, in which banks and other reporting institutions declare the loans, credits and guarantees they hold with their customers, whether up to date or unpaid, above the amount threshold set by the regulations. Guarantors appear as well, for example the director who personally guaranteed the debts of his or her company. An old debt keeps appearing for as long as the institution keeps reporting it as a claim, even if it treats it as written off, and the CIRBE has no age limit like that of private files. Appearing on it neither interrupts limitation nor proves that the debt is enforceable, but the institutions you approach for finance receive aggregate information on your risks.
Bank of Spain Circular 1/2026 of 21 October, which enters into force on 19 November 2026, regulates how institutions report to the Register. It is not an amnesty and it cancels no entry by itself, nor does the right to correct the data originate with it. That right lies in article 65 of Law 44/2002, which grants every data subject free access to their report and the possibility of asking, through the Bank of Spain, for the reporting institution to rectify or cancel inaccurate data. While the request is being processed, the law provides for the disclosure of the disputed data to third parties to be suspended, and the institution has a short period in which to reply.
The first step is to request that report, which you can do today at no cost through the Bank of Spain’s online office. You will see which institution reports the operation, for what amount and with what status. With a paid debt the data is inaccurate and the proof of payment is the argument. With a time-barred debt the institution may maintain that the claim exists as long as nobody has declared otherwise, and the discussion is more technical. What is argued, before whom and with which documents in each case is the lawyer’s work. The fund that bought your debt is generally not among the institutions that report to the CIRBE, so the entry that harms you may be somewhere else.
Five years at most in private defaulters files
Private credit files are governed by article 20 of Organic Law 3/2018. They only admit debts that are certain, due and payable and that the debtor has not disputed through administrative or court channels, and the data may be kept for as long as the default lasts, with a maximum of five years from the due date of the obligation. A debt from twenty, eighteen or ten years ago cannot lawfully appear in ASNEF or in any similar file, whether or not limitation has been interrupted. If it does, articles 16 and 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation allow you to demand rectification and erasure, and article 82 compensation where the wrongful listing has caused damage, such as the refusal of a mortgage.
Debts owed to public authorities and debts of a deceased relative
Debts owed to the Tax Agency and to Social Security are time-barred after four years, have their own rules on interruption and are not entered on the CIRBE. They are disputed through administrative channels and not before the civil court.
The debts of a deceased person pass to whoever accepted the inheritance outright, who also answers with his or her own assets (article 1003 of the Civil Code), but they pass with their age. The heir can raise the same limitation that the deceased could have raised, and if you have not yet accepted, the decision on the inheritance should be taken with those debts in view.
A token payment or an unanswered court demand, the cost of going alone
The risk of handling this by yourself is specific. A payment of twenty euros to stop the calls, or a conversation in which you admit the debt, can give the creditor the acknowledgment it was missing, and an unanswered court demand turns a time-barred debt into a title enforceable against your wages. Conversely, if all you receive are collection letters for a small amount, with no court claim and no entry in any file, hiring a lawyer may not be worth it, and it is enough not to pay, not to acknowledge and to keep whatever they send. At Perseus & RC Abogados we check whether the debt has court proceedings behind it, prepare the opposition on grounds of limitation or payment and seek the correction of the CIRBE and of private files as part of our civil law work. You can call +34 677 841 007 or write to us through the contact page.
Frequently asked questions
Is a 20-year-old debt always time-barred, or are there cases where it can still be claimed?
Not always. A loan, credit or card debt from 2006 with no judgment became time-barred at the end of December 2020 at the latest, unless the creditor proves demands or acknowledgments that interrupted the period without leaving gaps. It remains enforceable if there was a judgment with enforcement sought in time, or if it is a mortgage, whose action lasts twenty years.
My debt predates Law 42/2015, which period applies to me and until what date could it be claimed?
The previous fifteen-year period applies, with a cap. If the debt was due before 7 October 2005, it became time-barred on reaching fifteen years. If it fell due between that date and 7 October 2015, it became time-barred at the end of December 2020, under the fifth transitional provision of Law 42/2015 and the 2020 suspension of time limits. All of this is subject to interruption.