The first final provision of Law 42/2015, dated October 5th, for the amendment of Civil Procedure Law 1/2000, dated January 7th, sees the introduction of an important reduction to the limitation period for the exercising of personal actions for which no special limitation period is established. Thus, the general limitation period of 15 years as established by the Civil Code was reduced to 5 years, as from 7th October.
This reduction to the limitation period is of particular importance if we take into account the fact that there are many personal actions for which no special limitation period is established and which, consequently, are now limited to 5 years (for example, a contractual liability claim against the developer handing over a property with construction defects, whereby one was allowed to claim against the developer even when all the guarantee limitation periods established under the Spanish law on building ordinances (“LOE”) had expired.)
Seeing as the reduction of the limitation period from 15 to 5 years offers no doubt, the question one must ask is, what about those actions born prior to October 7th, 2015? A reading of Law 42/2015 and the first comments that have been published there upon, lead us to interpret that the limitation of those actions shall expire 5 years from the date the said law came into force, that is to say, October 7th, 2020.