Editorial: suspending procedural deadlines in a disaster should not depend on a decree-law

This is an editorial by the AGENTE LEX newsroom. It expresses the portal's opinion.

When a disaster prevents lawyers from working, the immediate question is what happens to the deadlines. This summer, professionals in several judicial districts affected by the wildfires lived it. The answer came with Royal Decree-Law 20/2026 of 29 July, published in BOE no. 185 of 30 July 2026.

What the decree-law did

According to its preamble, Order INT/748/2026 of 23 July declared the emergency of national interest in the Community of Madrid and the province of Ávila, and Order INT/762/2026 of 25 July extended it to the province of Toledo.

On procedural matters, the royal decree-law:

• Suspended procedural deadlines from 27 to 31 July 2026 in the judicial districts of Ávila, Arenas de San Pedro, Talavera de la Reina, Torrijos, Navalcarnero, San Lorenzo de El Escorial and Nules (second additional provision).
• Suspended limitation and expiry periods during that suspension (fourth additional provision).
• Regulated the period for the duty to file for insolvency (third additional provision).

Under its third final provision, it entered into force the day after its publication, that is 31 July 2026: the last day of the suspended period.

The problem

The suspension was useful and necessary. But it came when the affected period was practically over. During the preceding days, a lawyer in those judicial districts could not know with certainty whether a deadline falling in the middle of the emergency would be suspended or not.

When in doubt, professional diligence requires acting as if the deadline were running. That is: filing briefs from an evacuated place, with no access to the office or the case files, or risking that the suspension might not come. It is a burden that falls on professionals and, ultimately, on their clients.

The problem is not this particular decree-law, which resolved the situation. The text itself refers, among other rules, to Article 134.2 of the Civil Procedure Act. But the general suspension of deadlines in several judicial districts needed a rule approved for the occasion, and that makes its arrival depend on the Government's calendar, not on the emergency.

What we ask for

A stable procedure. A rule allowing the suspension of deadlines in territories affected by a declared emergency, with a competent body, known criteria and effects from the start of the emergency.

Immediate communication. That the decision be published as soon as it is adopted, so that professionals know where they stand while the situation lasts, not when it has already passed.

Clear criteria on what is suspended. Procedural deadlines, limitation and expiry periods, and the periods of appropriate dispute resolution methods, which today condition access to the courts in many matters, as we explain in the guide to the precondition for suing.

Participation of the bar associations. Bar associations know in real time the situation of their members and can report on the scope of an emergency on professional practice.

In the meantime

For firms, the recommendation is preventive: have a continuity plan that allows working outside the office, with secure access to case files and the possibility of substitution by a colleague, which the General Statute allows in court proceedings, as we recall in the guide to individual practice of law.

Legal certainty also means knowing, in the middle of an emergency, which deadlines are running. It is a question of drafting technique that we already raised regarding the housing decree-laws. More editorials in Opinion.