BORME API

Guides · Insolvency

Where a Spanish insolvency (concurso de acreedores) is published, what each source adds, what the stages mean, and how to keep an eye on a customer or supplier

2026-10-19 · 8 min · guide

By BORMEAPI Engineering

A company that cannot regularly pay its debts as they fall due is not automatically in a concurso de acreedores. The concurso is a court process, governed by the consolidated Insolvency Act (*texto refundido de la Ley Concursal*, Royal Legislative Decree 1/2020, as amended), and only a court can declare it: usually a commercial court (juzgado de lo mercantil, now the commercial section of the Tribunal de Instancia). A registry, a gazette or a data provider can only report what the court decided and what was published about it. That is what BORMEAPI does: it reports the notices published in the BORME.

This guide explains where those decisions are published, what each source adds, how to read a registry notice, and how to keep watching a company you do business with.

The three places a declaration appears

1. The BOE, as a court edict. When the court declares a concurso, the court clerk sends an edict to the state gazette, the *Boletín Oficial del Estado, for urgent publication in its single court-notice board (Tablón Edictal Judicial Único*). The law (article 35 of the Insolvency Act) sets what the edict must contain: the debtor's details, including its tax number (NIF); the court and the case number; the date of the declaration; whether the debtor's powers over its assets are subject to supervision (intervención) or suspended (suspensión); who the insolvency administrator is; and how and by when creditors must file their claims. Under the ordinary rule, the edict is sent on the day the administrator accepts the appointment; a concurso without assets (see below) follows its own rule.

2. The Registro Público Concursal. The same edict goes to the public insolvency register, at publicidadconcursal.es, which is free and public. Its sections collect the declaration and later court decisions, restrictions on the debtor's powers and culpable-insolvency judgments. They also record communications that a debtor has opened negotiations with its creditors, unless the communication is confidential, and court approvals of restructuring plans; neither of those is a concurso.

3. The Registro Mercantil, and then the BORME. The declaration is also entered on the company's sheet at the commercial registry: first as an annotation and, once the court order is final (firme), as an inscription (article 36). The registered act is then published in the *Boletín Oficial del Registro Mercantil*, the BORME, under the heading Situación concursal.

The law sends the declaration down these routes separately and does not fix an order between them. What is fixed is that the BORME notice comes after the registry entry. For the declarations the BORME published in 2026, the median gap between the date of the court decision and the BORME notice was 82 days. The BORME is not the fastest source. Its value is that the published registry notices about the proceedings sit next to the company's other registered acts: appointments, address changes, dissolution. It is not the complete court record.

How a concurso unfolds

These are the phases and other procedural events that registry notices mention. Not all of them are court decisions, not every case goes through all of them, and they do not form a fixed sequence. Qualifying micro-enterprises follow a separate special procedure.

Since 2022 there is also the concurso sin masa: the debtor has no attachable assets, or the cost of realising them, their insufficient unencumbered value or the charges on them make them inadequate. The court declares the concurso without further rulings. Creditors representing at least 5% of the debts have fifteen days from the day after the edict is published to ask for an administrator to report on the case, and depending on the report, the proceedings can continue.

When the concurso of a company ends because the liquidation is finished or because the assets are insufficient, the court orders the provisional closure of its registry sheet. A year later, if the case has not been reopened, the registrar cancels the company's registration and closes the sheet for good (article 485). The provisional closure can appear in the BORME under the heading Cierre provisional hoja registral Art.485 TRLC.

How to read a Situación concursal notice

A BORME notice of this kind looks like this. The example is invented, but it follows the real format:

412345 - EJEMPLO DE SERVICIOS SL.
Situación concursal. Procedimiento concursal 123/2026. FIRME: SI, Fecha de
resolución 02/09/2026. Auto de declaración de concurso. Voluntario. Juzgado:
num. 0 SECCION DE LO MERCANTIL DEL TRIBUNAL DE INSTANCIA DE MADRID. PLAZA Nº 1.
Juez: NOMBRE APELLIDO APELLIDO.
Datos registrales. T 45000 , F 101, S 8, H M 800000, I/A 12 (01.10.26).

Two older headings still appear: Suspensión de pagos and Quiebra, the procedures that existed before the Insolvency Act of 2003 took effect on 1 September 2004. Proceedings pending on that date generally remained under the earlier legislation, and registries still record developments in them and cancel them. A notice under these headings today is usually about one of those old cases, not a new one.

How to check one company

  1. Search the Registro Público Concursal by name or tax number. It is the most direct free check for a declared concurso and its later decisions.
  2. Look at the company's registry history. In the BORME, look for its notices under Situación concursal; at the registry, an up-to-date registry extract (nota simple) shows what is entered on the sheet today.
  3. Read the last stage, not the first. A declaration from 2015 followed by a conclusion in 2018 is a closed case. A conclusion for insufficient assets is not a recovery. Tell the provisional closure of the sheet apart from the later cancellation of the company's registration.
  4. Check the date of the court decision and whether it is final. The publication can come months later.

What BORMEAPI shows

BORMEAPI reads the registered-act notices the BORME has published since 2009, including 175,037 notices with a Situación concursal entry, and recognises a set of procedural labels in them: request, declaration, supervision or suspension of powers, administrator appointed, liquidation phase opened, liquidation plan approved, arrangement phase opened or arrangement approved, qualification (culpable or fortuitous), conclusion, archive, reopening and others. Where the notice text has recognisable values, it extracts the stage, the case number, the court, the date of the decision and whether it is final. Every event keeps the reference to the official BORME notice it came from.

Two fields describe each company:

On 19 October 2026, 22,616 companies had in_insolvency set to true. For 5,286 of them the registry shows the company's registry sheet as closed or the company as extinct, with no later conclusion that we recognise, which is why the two fields must be read together. So far in 2026 the BORME has published 2,620 Situación concursal entries that we recognise as declarations, and 189 that record only a request.

Where it shows up:

This does not replace the court record. The BORME publishes the acts that reached the commercial registry. Before deciding on credit or a contract, check the Registro Público Concursal and the relevant court decisions, and use the registry history for the company's background.

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