What debtor registers are
Credit reference files, known in Spain as debtor registers (ficheros de morosos), are databases that banks, finance companies, phone companies and other businesses check to assess the risk of a customer not paying when they apply for a loan or finance a purchase. The best known are Asnef and Badexcug, run by Experian. There is also the Registro de Impagados Judiciales (register of court-recognised unpaid debts).
They should not be confused with the CIRBE, the Banco de España’s risk information centre (Central de Información de Riesgos). The CIRBE is not a debtor register: it records the loans and risks you have with financial institutions, whether or not they are up to date. You can request your report from the Banco de España free of charge.
Anyone can end up on one of these registers, rightly or wrongly. If you are listed, you will most likely be refused finance, and the company does not have to tell you which register you appear on or who added you.
Requirements for a listing to be lawful
Companies that report data to these registers must meet a number of requirements. They are set out in Article 20 of Ley Orgánica 3/2018 (the Spanish Data Protection and Digital Rights Act), together with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):
- The debt must be certain, due and payable.
- A debt cannot be listed if you have disputed its existence or amount in an administrative or court claim or in a binding dispute resolution procedure.
- The creditor must have asked you to pay beforehand and told you, in the contract or in that payment demand, that it could add you to a register.
- The data can only be kept while the debt remains unpaid and, at most, for five years from the date it fell due.
- The data must be accurate and up to date. If you pay, it must be removed.
The right to honour and compensation
If these requirements are not met, your right to honour (derecho al honor), protected by Ley Orgánica 1/1982, may have been breached. Appearing on a register checked by many companies as someone who does not pay, when that is not true, damages your reputation. It happens more often than people think: the non-payment may be due to a disagreement over a tariff, a bank error or a charge you were never told about.
The Tribunal Supremo (Spain’s Supreme Court) has said that compensation for breaching a fundamental right cannot be token, nor so low that it pays companies to keep reporting incorrect data. To set the amount, the courts consider, among other things, how long you were listed, how many companies checked your details and what consequences it had for you.
Even so, be wary of anyone online promising very high compensation for any listing. Each case depends on its circumstances, and my job is to give you a realistic assessment. If the debt comes from a card with very high interest, see also the page on revolving credit cards. To get started, you can tell me about your case through the online consultation.
