Your tender was excluded, the contract awarded to another tenderer, or the procurement documents bar or hinder you from competing. You have fifteen working days to appeal.
As soon as we have the complete file we examine it in full: the procurement documents, how the tenders were scored, and the reasons given for the award. Within 48 hours you will have a written opinion on whether an appeal stands. The opinion is free.
ScrollMore than a quarter of the appeals lodged in Spain are never examined on the merits. Article 55 of the Public Sector Contracts Act sets out exhaustively when a tribunal declares an appeal inadmissible without ruling on it: lack of jurisdiction, lack of standing or of proof of authority to act, a challenge to an act that cannot be appealed, and lateness. They are not lost on the substance. They are lost on the form.
The special appeal in numbers
Special procurement appeals resolved across Spain in 2024, by the central, regional, local and sectoral tribunals combined.
Working days to lodge the appeal, from notification or publication. It is a strict time limit that cannot be extended. Once it lapses, this route, fast and with suspensive effect, is gone.
End without the tribunal reaching the substance of the matter: inadmissibility or withdrawal.
It is not only the award that can be appealed
The special appeal is not confined to the award decision. Article 44.2 of the Public Sector Contracts Act extends it to contract notices, to the procurement documents, to the exclusion of a tenderer and to the procedural acts that determine the outcome of the procedure. In many cases the right moment to challenge comes well before any award is made.
The contract cannot be signed while the appeal is pending
Once an appeal is lodged against the award decision, the procurement procedure is suspended by operation of article 53 of the Act, without any need to request it. That is the difference from going straight to the administrative courts, where judgment tends to arrive when the contract has been running for years. The suspension has one significant exception: it does not apply to contracts based on a framework agreement or to specific contracts within a dynamic purchasing system, where interim measures must be requested instead.
Before submitting the bid
The procurement documents can exclude your company before it ever submits a bid: by requiring financial or technical standing disproportionate to the subject matter, or by drafting the technical specifications around the characteristics of one particular supplier. Time runs from the day after the contract notice is published on the contracting authority's profile, so the decision to challenge has to be taken before bidding: article 50.1.b) itself bars any appeal against the procurement documents once the company has submitted a bid or a request to participate, save in cases of absolute nullity.
When you are ruled out
Exclusion as an abnormally low tender decided without the adversarial procedure of article 149, without giving the tenderer the chance to justify that the tender is viable, or a documentary defect treated as incurable when it could in fact be remedied. Article 44.2.b) itself makes the exclusion of tenders appealable in every case, including those rejected as abnormally low: these are two of the grounds that most often reach the review tribunals.
Reports and proposals
An evaluation report or a proposed exclusion may be appealed in their own right where they decide, even indirectly, on the award or cause prejudice to legitimate interests. Waiting for the final decision can mean losing the deadline.
What should have gone to tender
Where a contracting authority extends an existing contract beyond what the procurement documents allowed, or awards the work in-house without meeting the statutory requirements, it is withholding from competition something that should have been advertised. Article 44.2 makes that appealable too.
From the file to the appeal, against the clock
Access to the file
What we need in order to appeal: the notification, the procurement documents and the evaluation report or the evaluation committee's minutes. If the scoring is missing, the tenderer itself can request the file from the contracting authority under article 52 of the Act: the authority has five working days to make it available, and the request does not stop the appeal deadline, which keeps running. Without knowing what was assessed and how it was scored, any forecast about the prospects of an appeal is unfounded.
First 24 hoursOpinion on the merits
A reasoned written opinion on whether the appeal stands, citing the decisions of the competent tribunal that support it or that contradict it. If the conclusion is unfavourable, we tell you so and the matter ends there.
48 hours · free of chargeLodging the appeal
The written appeal sets out the act challenged, the grounds and the evidence relied on, and encloses proof of authority to act, as article 51 requires, before the competent tribunal and within time. More than a quarter of appeals never reach the substance, through one of the grounds of inadmissibility in article 55: lateness, a challenge to an act not open to this remedy, or standing that was not established. A remediable defect allows only three working days to cure it (article 51.2); an incurable one, none. Those questions are settled while preparing the appeal, not while drafting it.
Within the 15 working daysDecision
The tribunal rules and its decision is directly enforceable (article 59.2): the contracting authority must comply, and neither it nor its internal audit bodies may reopen the decision of their own motion (article 59.3). Only judicial review lies against it, and more than 90% are complied with without reaching the courts.
55 days on average before the central tribunalEach tribunal decides differently
They do not all decide alike
The same appeal does not fare equally before one tribunal and another. Hence the first step is to examine the case law of whichever body has jurisdiction: it shapes how the appeal is argued and, on occasion, the advice not to lodge it at all.
Twelve tribunals, one map
Nine autonomous communities have their own tribunal, plus a provincial body in Gipuzkoa. Ten territories have conferred jurisdiction on the central tribunal by agreement, and that agreement covers municipalities and provincial councils as well.
- Own tribunal Andalusia · Aragón · Canary Islands · Castile and León
- Catalonia · Galicia · Madrid · Navarre · Basque Country
- Provincial body Gipuzkoa
- By agreement with the central tribunal Valencia · Murcia · Asturias · Cantabria
- Balearics · Extremadura · La Rioja · Castile-La Mancha · Ceuta · Melilla
We act before all twelve procurement review bodies in Spain. The procedure is entirely electronic, so there is no need to travel.
The opinion on the merits is free and comes in writing. The fee for the appeal is set once we have reviewed the case and confirmed to you in writing before any work starts, so you commit to nothing until then.
- Review of the procurement file and the evaluation report
- Reasoned written opinion within 48 hours
- If the appeal is not viable, we say so and the matter ends there
- Written appeal before the competent tribunal
- Interim measures in the appeal itself, decided within five working days
- Submissions in reply to the contracting authority's report
- Follow-up through to the decision
- Review of the procurement documents before you bid
- Which clauses are open to challenge, and how long you have
- Exclusion risks in your own submission
- If a challenge is warranted, we say so and quote for the appeal separately
Questions companies raise
It depends on what is being appealed. If it is the award decision, article 53 suspends the procurement procedure without any need to ask. One exception matters here: contracts based on a framework agreement and specific contracts within a dynamic purchasing system fall outside that automatic suspension. In those cases, and for the other appealable acts, the route is interim measures, which may be sought before appealing (article 49) or in the appeal itself and are decided within the five working days laid down in article 56.3: the same period in which the tribunal rules on whether to maintain or lift the automatic suspension.
Article 44.1 reserves it for works contracts and works or service concessions with an estimated value above €3,000,000, and for supply and service contracts above €100,000, together with framework agreements, dynamic purchasing systems and certain subsidised contracts and in-house awards. Below those thresholds the route is different (an ordinary administrative appeal or judicial review, under article 44.6) and we will tell you so. The converse mistake is worth flagging, because it is common in practice: where the contract does fall within the special appeal, article 44.5 rules out ordinary administrative appeals. Filing one there does not preserve the deadline, it consumes it.
Yes. The procedure is entirely electronic and we act before all twelve review bodies: the central tribunal, the nine regional ones and the provincial body in Gipuzkoa. There is no need for you to travel or for us to be in your province.
Tell us about the case
Please give the date of the notification or of the contract notice, as the time available depends on it. We reply the same working day.
If the deadline falls in less than 72 hours, write to us directly at contacto@impugnarlicitaciones.es marking the subject «URGENT».