Appealing a planning decision in Spain: reposicion, alzada and the judicial route for refused building licences

When a Spanish town hall refuses your building licence (licencia de obra mayor), imposes conditions that gut your project, or simply fails to respond, you have three legal routes: recurso potestativo de reposicion, recurso de alzada, and recurso contencioso-administrativo. Each has its own deadline, filing body and cost. The framework is Ley 39/2015 for administrative appeals and Ley 29/1998 for the judicial route. In Andalusia, the regional planning law (Ley 7/2002, consolidated by RDL 7/2015 and amended by Ley 7/2021) sits on top. The single most important practical distinction is that administrative appeals do not suspend the refused act; only a court can do that.

Which appeal routes are available for a refused building licence?

Spanish law offers three routes, and the choice depends on whether the refusing act exhausts the administrative pathway, how quickly you need protection, and whether you need the court’s power to suspend enforcement.

The recurso potestativo de reposicion (Articles 123 to 124 of Ley 39/2015, BOE-A-2015-10565) asks the same body that issued the refusal to reconsider. It is optional: you can skip it. The filing deadline is one month from notification if the act was express. The recurso de alzada (Articles 121 to 122 of Ley 39/2015) escalates to the hierarchical superior, typically the provincial delegation or the autonomous community if the municipality delegated the decision. It also carries a one-month deadline from an express act, or three months from deemed silence. The recurso contencioso-administrativo (Article 46 of Ley 29/1998, BOE-A-1998-16718) takes the dispute to a specialised court and must be filed within two months of the final administrative decision, or six months from administrative silence.

The key structural point: if the refusing act does not exhaust the administrative route (most municipal planning officer decisions do not), you file an alzada. If it does exhaust the route (plenary council or autonomous government decisions), you file a reposicion (optional) and then go straight to court.

How do the three routes compare?

Dimension	Reposicion	Alzada	Contencioso-administrativo
Legal basis	Arts 123-124, Ley 39/2015	Arts 121-122, Ley 39/2015	Art 46, Ley 29/1998
Filing body	Same body that refused	Hierarchical superior	Juzgado de lo Contencioso-Administrativo
Deadline (express act)	1 month	1 month	2 months
Deadline (silence)	3 months	3 months	6 months
Resolution period	1 month	3 months	12-24 months (judgment)
Mandatory?	Optional	If act does not exhaust route	After admin route exhausted
Lawyer required?	No (recommended)	No (recommended)	Yes (abogado + procurador)
Cost	Free	Free	EUR 4,000-20,000+
Suspends the act?	No	No	Court can order suspension
Typical outcome	Rarely overturns	Rarely overturns	Annulment if procedurally flawed

The cost figures for the judicial route reflect the abogado and procurador fees plus expert reports. The administrative routes carry no filing fee, though engaging a lawyer to draft them is advisable for planning matters.

What is the deadline for each route, and when does the clock start?

Deadlines are strict and run from the day after notification, not the date of the decision itself.

For the recurso de reposicion, Article 124.1 of Ley 39/2015 sets one month from notification of an express act. After that deadline, only the contencioso-administrativo route remains available. For the recurso de alzada, Article 122.1 sets the same one-month period from an express act, or three months from the date the administration should have resolved and did not (silencio administrativo). For the judicial route, Article 46.1 of Ley 29/1998 sets two months from notification of the act that exhausts the administrative route, or six months from deemed silence. Article 46.4 adds that if you filed a potestativo de reposicion first, the two-month judicial clock runs from the notification of the reposicion resolution or from its deemed dismissal.

One critical wrinkle: the month of August is inhábil for contencioso-administrativo deadlines (Article 48.2 of Ley 29/1998), meaning the judicial clock does not run during August. Administrative deadlines under Ley 39/2015 are counted in working days, excluding weekends and holidays.

Can the refused licence be suspended while the appeal is pending?

This is the practical question that most competitors fail to answer clearly. Administrative appeals, whether reposicion or alzada, do not suspend the challenged act. The refusal stands and enforcement can proceed.

If the town hall has issued a demolition order or a stop-work notice alongside the refusal, the only way to halt it is to petition the contencioso-administrativo court for medidas cautelares (provisional measures) under Articles 129 to 136 of Ley 29/1998. The court can suspend the administrative act while the main proceeding unfolds. This is a separate filing, not automatic, and the court will weigh the public interest against the harm to the appellant. For a property owner facing demolition, this is often the single most important step in the entire process: without it, the town hall can execute the order while your appeal crawls through the courts.

The cost of obtaining suspension is modest compared to the value of the protection it provides. The court may require a guarantee (afianzamiento) to cover potential damages if the suspension is later lifted, but for a planning appeal the guarantee is typically a fraction of the project value.

What happens when the town hall stays silent on a licence application?

Under Article 24 of Ley 39/2015, if the administration does not resolve within the statutory period, the silence is treated as a deemed refusal (silencio negativo) for most planning matters. This is the opposite of the general rule for applications that confer a benefit, where silence is positive.

The practical consequence is that after the statutory response period (typically six months for a licencia de obra mayor under the Andalusia planning framework, though local ordinances vary), the applicant can treat the lack of response as a refusal and file a recurso de alzada against the presumed act. If the alzada is also met with silence, the three-month period for the alzada resolution under Article 122.2 of Ley 39/2015 lapses, and the applicant can proceed to the contencioso-administrativo court under Article 46.1 of Ley 29/1998 with a six-month deadline from the deemed silence.

This matters because many town halls, particularly small municipalities, are slow to process licence applications. The silence mechanism ensures the applicant is not trapped indefinitely waiting for a response that may never come. However, the applicant must actively assert the right: the silence does not automatically produce a licence or a right to build.

What is the Andalusia-specific planning layer?

The national procedural law (Ley 39/2015) governs how you appeal. The substantive planning law that the appeal challenges is regional. In Andalusia, the framework is Ley 7/2002, de 17 de diciembre, de Ordenacion Urbanistica de Andalucia (BOE-A-2003-811), consolidated by Real Decreto Legislativo 7/2015, de 30 de octubre (BOE-A-2015-11723), and amended by Ley 7/2021, de 1 de diciembre, de impulso para la sostenibilidad del territorio de Andalucia (BOE-A-2021-20916).

This regional layer defines what a licencia de obra mayor is, who is competent to grant or refuse it, the statutory response periods, and the specific grounds on which a refusal can be challenged. A refusal grounded in the local plan (PGOU, now called the Municipal Planning Instrument in Andalusia after Ley 7/2021) is harder to overturn because the municipality has broad discretion in applying its own planning instrument. A refusal grounded in a procedural error (missing mandatory report, wrong competence, failure to notify affected parties) is more vulnerable because the error is objective and verifiable.

For a property owner on the Costa del Sol, the practical intersection is this: the building control process for a new build or major renovation runs through the municipal urbanismo department under the Andalusia framework, while the appeal against a refusal runs through the national procedural framework. Understanding both is essential. If you are buying a plot of land, checking whether a planning permission would be granted before purchase is far cheaper than appealing a refusal afterwards.

What are the realistic chances of success?

Planning appeals in Spain rarely succeed on the merits. The municipality has wide discretionary authority over urban planning, and courts defer to that discretion unless the decision is procedurally flawed or manifestly contrary to law.

The strongest grounds for overturning a planning refusal are procedural: the town hall issued the refusal without the mandatory technical report, the deciding official lacked competence, the notification was defective, or the refusal misapplied a specific provision of the local plan. Substantive challenges, arguing that the refusal was wrong on the planning merits, face an uphill battle because the court reviews legality, not the wisdom of the planning decision.

This is why most successful planning appeals target the procedure rather than the outcome. If the refurbishment permits process was derailed by a missing report or a wrong competence call, the court can annul the refusal and order the town hall to reissue. If the refusal was a correct application of the local plan, the court will uphold it.

For a property owner facing a refused licence, the strategic question is whether the refusal contains a procedural defect worth pursuing. If it does, the contencioso-administrativo route is viable. If it does not, the better path may be to modify the project to comply with the local plan and reapply, rather than spending EUR 4,000 to 20,000 on a judicial appeal with low odds. The due diligence process for illegal builds is the preventive counterpart: checking the planning status before purchase avoids the situation where a licence application is doomed from the start.

The same procedural discipline applies to appealing property tax assessments, where the challenge targets the valuation method rather than the policy choice. In both cases, the appeal succeeds when the administration made an objective error, not when the appellant disagrees with the exercise of discretion.

This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and individual circumstances differ. Verify current requirements with an independent lawyer (abogado) or tax advisor (gestor/asesor fiscal) before acting.