Expulsion orders and the sanctioning procedure in Spain

Official fee

Legal assistance is provided of its own motion, and legal aid and an interpreter are free where you lack economic means

Official name

Procedimiento sancionador y expulsión del territorio

Forms

—

Steps

13

Documents required

4

Source: Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto 1155/2024, por el que se aprueba el Reglamento de la Ley Orgánica 4/2000 (texto consolidado). Checked 14 September 2026.

Every immigration fee, with the official Spanish wording

Step by step

1. 1

   Leaving during the procedure avoids the entry ban

   This is the provision to read first. The competent body does not impose an entry ban where the person leaves Spanish territory while the file is being processed — and revokes a ban already imposed where they leave within the voluntary compliance period set in the expulsion order. An expulsion with no entry ban and an expulsion with a five-year ban are very different futures, and the difference can turn on a decision taken in the first weeks.

2. 2

   But the departure has to be properly evidenced

   For files processed on the grounds of unlawful presence or of lacking a valid permit, the departure must be duly communicated to the competent body, and the Regulation says exactly how. Either by completing, before the police services responsible for border control, the form provided to record a foreign national's departure from Spanish territory. Or by attending the Spanish consular office in your country of origin or residence, where documentation evidencing that the departure took place before the decision, or within the voluntary compliance period, is recorded. Leaving quietly and hoping it is noticed is not one of the two ways.

3. 3

   How long a ban lasts when one is imposed

   An expulsion order carries a prohibition on entering Spanish territory, extended to the territories of states Spain has agreements with. Its length is set according to the circumstances of the case and cannot exceed five years. Exceptionally, where the person represents a serious threat to public order, public security, national security or public health, it can run up to ten years — and that requires a prior report from the immigration police.

4. 4

   Six months, and then the file expires

   The decision must be issued and notified within six months of the procedure being opened. If that passes without it, the procedure expires and the file must be closed — on the application of any interested party or by the deciding body itself. The exceptions are where the procedure was paralysed through the fault of the interested parties, or where it was formally suspended.

5. 5

   And the infringement itself can become time-barred

   The power to sanction lapses three years after the facts for a very serious infringement, two years for a serious one and six months for a minor one. Any action by the administration that the person is aware of interrupts that clock. But it restarts if the procedure sits paralysed for more than a month for reasons not attributable to them. Both limitation and expiry are applied by the competent bodies of their own motion, at every stage.

6. 6

   The sanction has its own clock

   Once imposed, a sanction lapses after five years if it was for a very serious infringement, two for a serious one and one for a minor one, counted from the day after the decision becomes final. Where the sanction is expulsion, that clock does not begin until the entry ban set in the decision has run its course — which is why the ban and the sanction are not the same period and should not be added together.

7. 7

   The preferential procedure, and its forty-eight hours

   Where expulsion may be proposed, the file is handled under the preferential procedure for the more serious grounds, and also for simple unlawful presence where there is a risk of absconding, where the person avoids or hinders the expulsion, or where they represent a risk to public order, public security or national security. Risk of absconding is assessed on things like having no address or identity documents, no evidence of having entered the Schengen area lawfully, or having failed to comply with an obligation to leave. In that procedure you have forty-eight hours from the notified, written and reasoned initiation agreement to say what you consider appropriate.

8. 8

   What happens if those forty-eight hours pass in silence

   The notification must warn you of it, and it is severe: where you make no representations yourself or through a representative, propose no evidence, or the evidence you propose is refused as inappropriate or unnecessary in a reasoned decision, the initiation agreement is itself treated as the proposed resolution and the file goes to the authority competent to decide. Silence does not delay the case; it completes it.

9. 9

   A lawyer and an interpreter, in every case

   In all cases the person has the right to legal assistance, provided of the administration's own motion where necessary, and to be assisted by an interpreter if they do not understand or speak Spanish — both free where they lack economic means, under the free legal aid rules. Where representations and evidence are put forward in time, the instructing body must assess whether the evidence is relevant, and refuse it only with reasons.

10. 10

    No detention during the voluntary compliance period

    The decision can keep in place the precautionary measures needed to secure its effectiveness. But preventive internment cannot be ordered during the period for voluntary compliance fixed in the expulsion order. That is a clear statutory limit on what can be done to someone who has been given time to leave.

11. 11

    Saying you intend to appeal, including from detention

    The intention to appeal must be expressly stated, evidenced through the form of authority the civil procedure rules provide for. Where the person is deprived of liberty, they may state their intention to bring a contentious-administrative appeal, or the corresponding action, before the Government Delegate or Sub-delegate or the director of the immigration detention centre holding them — and those officials must record it in an act that is added to the file.

12. 12

    Appealing after you have left

    Where the person is not in Spain, they may still bring the available appeals, administrative and judicial, through the Spanish diplomatic or consular representations, which must forward them to the competent body. Every decision must state the appeals available against it, the body they go to, and the deadline.

13. 13

    What it means for anything else you had pending

    An expulsion carries in every case the extinction of any authorisation to remain lawfully in Spain, and the closing of any pending procedure seeking authorisation to reside or work here. There is nothing left running in the background, which is why the timing of a voluntary departure matters so much.

Common questions