By: Albors Galiano Portales
Order no. 230/2026 of the Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 16), dated 17 June 2026 (appeal 1552/2024), rules on the appeal lodged by Harmony Marine Ltd. against the order of Mataró Court of First Instance no. 3. That court had upheld the defendant’s jurisdictional challenge on subject-matter grounds and declined jurisdiction in favour of the Barcelona commercial courts, making no order as to costs. The underlying dispute concerned a claim arising from a ship repair.
The appellant relied on two grounds. The first was infringement of Article 65.3 of the Spanish Civil Procedure Act (LEC), which in its view required the proceedings to be dismissed rather than transferred. The second was infringement of Article 394 LEC, arguing that there were no doubts of law justifying the absence of a costs order.
On the first ground, the Court restates its settled position. Article 46 LEC applies where the specialised court to which the case was originally allocated finds that the matter belongs to another court; it must then decline jurisdiction in favour of the non-specialised courts of the same class. Where, however, it is the non-specialised court that first questions its own subject-matter jurisdiction, Article 46 LEC does not apply. Article 48 LEC applies instead, and it requires the proceedings to be dismissed without the case file being forwarded, with the parties told which class of court has jurisdiction (Articles 48.4 and 65.3 LEC). The Court adds that, because this case involved upholding a jurisdictional challenge rather than the court raising the issue of its own motion, Article 65.3 LEC also applies, and it prescribes the same outcome: the competent court is identified without the file being forwarded. The Court therefore upholds this ground and overturns the first-instance order, ordering the proceedings to be dismissed instead of transferred to the commercial courts.
On the second ground, concerning costs, the Court agrees with the first-instance court that there are serious doubts of law over whether the commercial courts have subject-matter jurisdiction in cases of this kind. Among the reasons supporting this conclusion, the Court notes that Article 86 ter 2(c) of the Organic Law on the Judiciary (LOPJ), now Article 87, gives the commercial courts jurisdiction over claims involving the application of maritime law without defining its scope; that Article 108.3 of the Maritime Navigation Act, which applies on a supplementary basis to ship repair or refit contracts “where the significance of the works so justifies”, leaves broad discretion over what counts as a repair of significant scale; that other reference provisions, such as Royal Decree 1837/2000 or the 1999 Geneva Convention on the Arrest of Ships, were not designed to define the jurisdiction of the commercial courts; that jurisdiction conferred on the commercial courts must be interpreted restrictively because it is special; and that there is no clear case law on the issue. On this basis, the Court dismisses this ground of appeal and confirms that no costs order should be made at either first instance or on appeal.
The Court allows the appeal in part. It overturns the first-instance order only to the extent of ordering the proceedings to be dismissed, and makes no order as to the costs of the appeal.
A strict application of the LEC provisions (Articles 46, 48 and 65.3) may well lead to the outcome the Court reached. Even so, it would have been helpful for the Order to explain in more detail why the two situations are treated differently, with transfer in one and dismissal in the other, depending on whether the Commercial or the Civil Section declares that it lacks jurisdiction. This question can also matter in practice for interrupting limitation periods, where a claim is filed before a court that later turns out to lack jurisdiction.