Someone has been convicted in different trials and at different times for different offences: five years in one case, three in another, two in a third. Without any corrective mechanism, they would have to serve the ten years consecutively. But Spanish criminal law provides for a mechanism that can reduce that time: the accumulation of sentences. It is one of the most important mechanisms for someone convicted in several proceedings and, at the same time, one of the least known among those affected.
Its basis is in Article 76 of the Criminal Code, which establishes a maximum limit on time served. The reason is to prevent the cumulative service of all the sentences, one after another, from leading to situations in which a person spends decades in prison, with the additional time served losing its rehabilitative function. Accumulation is the procedure by which the court groups the sentences from different proceedings and applies the maximum limits to the whole.
Article 76 establishes two types of limits. The general limit is three times the most serious sentence: if the convictions are of four, three, and two years, three times the most serious, that is twelve years, marks the cap; if the total sum, nine years, is below that limit, the sum is served; if it exceeds it, only the limit is served. In addition, there are insurmountable absolute caps: as a general rule, twenty years in prison; for especially serious offences, such as terrorism, it can be raised to twenty-five, thirty, or forty years. These caps operate whatever the total sum of the convictions.
The most important requirement is temporal: for the sentences from different proceedings to be accumulated, the offences for which they were imposed must have been committed before the convicted person began serving the first sentence. If they commit a new offence after the service has begun, that conviction is not accumulable. The interpretation of this criterion has generated abundant case law from the Supreme Court.
Accumulation is not automatic: it must be requested by the convicted person or their lawyer. The court that issued the most serious of the judgments to be accumulated is, as a general rule, the competent one. The request must be accompanied by certifications of all the judgments and clearly set out why the requirements are met. It is advisable to act swiftly: the sooner it is resolved favourably, the sooner the convicted person benefits.
It is important to understand that accumulation only produces real benefits when the total sum of the sentences exceeds the legal limits. If the sum does not exceed them, the time served equals the sum of the convictions, whether or not accumulation is requested. When the sum does exceed the cap, for example with convictions of ten, eight, and seven years that add up to twenty-five, accumulation reduces the time served to the absolute limit of twenty years.
Once the court rules favourably, the limit must be incorporated into the sentence calculation carried out by the penitentiary facility. If the calculation does not correctly reflect the result of the accumulation, the convicted person can challenge it before the prison supervision judge. Because of the technical complexity of this matter, it is advisable to have a criminal lawyer who knows the applicable case law.