The Spanish legal process for prosecuting illegal fishing: A story of success?

The document examines Spain's dual-track legal system for combating IUU fishing, highlighting the success of administrative sanctions—such as the 25 million euro penalties from Operations Sparrow I and II—while contrasting this with the failure of criminal prosecutions in external waters, specifically the Supreme Court's dismissal of charges against Vidal Armadores due to jurisdictional limits.

• Spain is regarded as one of the European Union Member States with the most efficient implementation of the IUU Regulation, demonstrated by high-profile successful administrative prosecutions.
• Administrative procedures in Spain have successfully imposed significant penalties; Operations Sparrow I and II resulted in combined fines exceeding 25 million euros against Spanish nationals for IUU fishing in Antarctic waters.
• The Spanish administrative system classifies IUU fishing violations as serious or very serious infringements, with financial penalties ranging from 601 to 600,000 euros depending on the severity.
• The Spanish Supreme Court (Judgment 974/2016) dismissed criminal charges against the Vidal Armadores group, ruling that Spanish courts lacked jurisdiction because the alleged offences occurred in external waters and the 'active personality principle' did not grant jurisdiction in this context.
• The Supreme Court's ruling on Vidal Armadores established that money laundering charges cannot be sustained without a qualifying principal offence, which in this case was absent because the primary acts occurred in external waters.
• Short limitation periods for initiating and imposing administrative sanctions (two years for serious and three years for very serious infringements) may make it impossible to prosecute the most serious IUU fishing cases due to their international nature.

APA

Noval, N. (2019). The Spanish legal process for prosecuting illegal fishing: A story of success? ClientEarth. https://www.clientearth.org/media/cd0jqn3j/the-spanish-legal-process-for-prosecuting-illegal-fishing-a-story-of-success-ce-en.pdf

Chicago

Noval, Nieves. The Spanish legal process for prosecuting illegal fishing: A story of success? ClientEarth, 2019. https://www.clientearth.org/media/cd0jqn3j/the-spanish-legal-process-for-prosecuting-illegal-fishing-a-story-of-success-ce-en.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Noval |first1=Nieves |title=The Spanish legal process for prosecuting illegal fishing: A story of success? |publisher=ClientEarth |date=July 2019 |url=https://www.clientearth.org/media/cd0jqn3j/the-spanish-legal-process-for-prosecuting-illegal-fishing-a-story-of-success-ce-en.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{noval2019spanish, author = {Noval, Nieves}, title = {{The Spanish legal process for prosecuting illegal fishing: A story of success?}}, institution = {ClientEarth}, year = {2019}, month = jul, url = {https://www.clientearth.org/media/cd0jqn3j/the-spanish-legal-process-for-prosecuting-illegal-fishing-a-story-of-success-ce-en.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }