Minor threats in Spain: Concepts and kinds of offences

The crime of threats contains the action or expression that anticipates the intention of harming or endangering another person. It's typified and regulated in the Spanish Penal Code in articles 169 to 171.

Crime of threats

The crime of threats contains expressing the intention to cause future harm to a person or their relatives.

The Penal Code states that anyone who threatens to cause harm to another person, their family or other persons with whom the latter is intimately linked might be committing the crime of threats.

Anyone who threatens someone else with harming them, their family and other persons with whom they're intimately linked, which constitutes crimes of homicide, injury, abortion, against freedom, torture and against moral integrity, sexual freedom, privacy, honour, property and socio-economic order, will be punished:

1. A prison sentence of one to five years, if the threat has been made by demanding a amount of money or imposing any other condition, even if it's not unlawful, and the guilty party has achieved their aim. If he has not succeeded, the penalty will be imprisonment for a term of half a year to three years.

The penalties set out in the previous paragraph will probably be increased by half if the threats are made in writing, by telephone or by any means of communication or reproduction, or on behalf of real or supposed entities or groups.

2. With a prison sentence of between 6 months and 2 yrs once the threat wasn't conditional.

Article 169 of the Criminal Code

However, a crime is not always committed when threatening another person. The Penal Code specifies certain requirements for threats becoming a criminal offence or not.

Requirements for a threat to become a criminal offence

This really is one of the very subjective of all the offences within the Criminal Code.

Anyone can understand as a risk something that another person mightn't do; therefore, it is very important to have reliable proof what happened (documents, witnesses, recordings, etc.) to be able to be able to clarify ahead of the judge what every person understands as a risk and under what circumstances it has occurred. As well as this, there has to be certain requirements within the threat itself for the act to be understood as a crime.


As well as carrying out the action of threatening, the alleged perpetrator must carry out the threats with actions that constitute a crime.

Quite simply, it is not enough just to threaten to commit the offence. It is also necessary that the action that is supposed to cause harm to another, that action with which the threat is created, is classified as a criminal offence.

A crime of threats is committed when, along with the threat, this threat takes its crime of: homicide, injury, abortion, against freedom, torture, against moral integrity, against sexual freedom, intimacy, honour, patrimony or socio-economic order.

Example: when a person says to another person "I'm planning to kill you!", he is threatening and, additionally, the very fact of killing is really a crime of homicide, so we are coping with an offense of threats.

Example: whenever a person says to another person "I'm not speaking with you any longer, don't ever talk if you ask me again!", this threat does not constitute a crime and therefore can not be classified as a frightening offence.

Forms of threatening offences and penalties

● Threats made by demanding an amount or imposing more than one conditions, even when these conditions aren't an offence. Example: "I will kill you if you do not pay me your son's debt" ;.
○ When the offender achieves his objective: 1 to 5 years imprisonment.
○ If the offender doesn't achieve his objective: 6 months to 3 years imprisonment.

● Threat manufactured in a non-conditional manner. Example: "I'll kill you and your family!
○ Sentence of 6 months to 2 years imprisonment.

● Threats made towards populations, ethnic, cultural or religious groups, a collective or some other number of persons:
○ Penalties higher in degree than those foreseen above.

● If the threats publicly call for the commission of terrorist acts:
○ Penalty of 6 months to 3 years imprisonment.

● Threatening having an evil that does not constitute danger when they're serious and with the objective assessment of the facts:
○ Penalty of 3 months to one year imprisonment or perhaps a fine of 6 to 24 months.

● If the offender achieves his objective: The penalty will probably be imposed in top of the 1 / 2 of the sentence.

● Once the threat includes receiving an incentive in exchange for not publishing or disseminating factual statements about the private life or family relations of another:

● Once the offender achieves his objective: Penalty of 2 to 4 years imprisonment.

If the offender doesn't succeed: 4 months to 2 years imprisonment.
If a risk is built to report an offense:

The prosecutor may not charge the offence if the offence is punishable by 2 years' imprisonment or less.

For more details kindly visit denuncias por amenazas (complaints of threats).