Assault & Physical Injury Defence Lawyers

The crime of assault (Arts. 147 to 156 of the Spanish Criminal Code) is one of the most invoked types in criminal courts and, at the same time, one with the greatest interpretive margin. The protected legal interest is bodily integrity and physical and mental health, both recognised as a fundamental right in Art. 15 of the Constitution. The provision punishes whoever, by any means or procedure, causes another an injury that impairs their bodily integrity or their physical or mental health, provided that the injury objectively requires, for its healing, in addition to a first medical assistance, medical or surgical treatment. Art. 147.1 itself draws the line with the minor offence: beyond initial medical attention, the injury must objectively require medical or surgical treatment, and mere monitoring or follow-up of how the injury heals does not count as medical treatment.

Types of Injuries and Modalities

The Code articulates several graduated modalities. The basic type of Art. 147.1 punishes injury requiring medical or surgical treatment. Art. 147.2 contemplates the minor assault offence when only first aid was required. Art. 148 allows the court to aggravate the penalty (it is discretionary: the penalty 'may' be imposed) when circumstances such as the use of weapons, dangerous instruments, cruelty, treachery concur or when the victim is under 14, a person with a disability requiring special protection, the offender's wife or a woman in an analogous relationship with him, or an especially vulnerable person living with him. Art. 149 typifies qualified injuries that cause loss or uselessness of organ or principal limb, sense or impotence, sterility, serious somatic or psychic illness, or serious deformity. Art. 150 contemplates the loss or uselessness of non-principal limb or minor deformity. Art. 152 regulates negligent injuries serious or less serious. Art. 153 sanctions occasional abuse in the context of gender-based and domestic violence (habitual violence falls under Art. 173.2). And Art. 154 typifies the tumultuous brawl: it punishes those who fight one another in a tumultuous melee using means or instruments that endanger life or physical integrity, simply for taking part, without any need to establish who caused each injury.

Penalties and Medical Expert Reports

Penalties are extremely variable according to the entity of the injury. The basic crime of Art. 147.1 carries 3 months to 3 years' prison or 6 to 12 months' fine. The minor offence of Art. 147.2 is only punished with 1 to 3 months' fine. Aggravated injuries under Art. 148 allow the court to raise the penalty to 2 to 5 years' prison. Loss of organ or sense under Art. 149 sanctions with 6 to 12 years' prison — one of the most serious types of the Code after homicide. Loss of non-principal limb or minor deformity under Art. 150 with 3 to 6 years' prison. Injuries caused by gross negligence under Art. 152.1 carry 3 to 6 months' prison or 6 to 18 months' fine where the result is that of Art. 147.1 (1 to 3 years' prison for the result of Art. 149 and 6 months to 2 years for that of Art. 150). In all cases, civil liability operates calculated according to the scale of Law 35/2015 on traffic accidents, applied by analogy: compensation for impeditive and non-impeditive days, aesthetic damage, functional sequelae, lost income and moral damage. In serious cases, the amount can reach one million euros.

Technical defence rests on several consolidated axes. The first is requalification to minor offence: the boundary between the less serious crime (Art. 147.1) and the minor crime (Art. 147.2) depends on whether the injury required medical treatment or only first aid; defence medical expertise is decisive in challenging the classification of the forensic doctor. The second is negligence versus intent: when the injury occurred in the context of a struggle, fall or accident, defence must prove the absence of animus laedendi to redirect the type to negligence, dramatically less burdensome. The third axis is the requalification of anatomical gravity: Supreme Court case-law on "principal organ", "principal limb" and "serious deformity" is casuistic and allows, with medical expertise, placing the injury in Art. 150 (3 to 6 years) instead of Art. 149 (6 to 12 years), with a difference of up to 6 years' prison.

Self-Defence, Mitigating Factors and Tumultuous Brawl

The fourth defensive axis is self-defence under Art. 20.4 CP: when the client repelled prior unlawful aggression with necessary and proportionate means, without sufficient provocation, complete exemption operates; if some but not all requirements concur (incomplete exemption), the penalty is reduced by one or two degrees under Arts. 21.1 and 68 CP. The fifth axis is the mitigating factors: outburst (Art. 21.3), partial intoxication or serious addiction (Arts. 21.1 and 21.2), damage repair (Art. 21.5), confession (Art. 21.4); each reduces the penalty in different measure and combines strategically. The sixth axis is the tumultuous brawl of Art. 154 CP: in a group fight with dangerous means, if no specific injury can be attributed to the client, there can be no conviction for assault and, at most, the client answers for taking part in the brawl, with 3 months to 1 year's prison or a 6-to-24-month fine, much less burdensome than individualised injuries.

In current forensic practice, assault proceedings concentrate on four recurrent scenarios: nightlife (fights in discotheques, terraces and festivals with use of bottles, glasses or blunt instruments), neighborhood and traffic conflicts (parking aggressions, road discussions, "road rage"), family violence (Art. 153 CP) with its specific evidentiary requirements, and workplace and traffic accidents reduced to serious negligent injuries (Art. 152). The reform by Organic Law 1/2015 consolidated the boundary between minor and less serious crimes, and Organic Law 10/2022 on integral sexual freedom guarantee has had indirect reflection in the concurrence with injuries derived from sexual aggression. At Alonso Sala we intervene with defence forensic medical experts, traumatologists to discuss injury mechanics, psychologists to prove post-traumatic sequelae and biomechanical experts in impact cases. We approach each file with the conviction that in assault crimes the difference between a minor penalty and prison, as well as the indemnity amount, is built document by document from the first medical report.

The tumultuous brawl offence of Art. 154 CP punishes those who fight one another, attacking each other tumultuously and using means or instruments that endanger the life or integrity of persons. What is punished is not the specific injury each may have caused, but mere participation in the brawl: it is an endangerment offence protecting life and physical integrity against the confusion of a group fight in which it is impossible to reconstruct who struck whom. The penalty is 3 months to 1 year imprisonment or a 6-to-24-month fine, markedly lower than that for individualized injuries.

Its defining feature is that it does not depend on identifying the author of each injury: Art. 154 punishes taking part in a brawl with dangerous means, whether or not anyone is injured. If the investigation identifies who produced a given injury, that person also answers for the offence of assault —the basic type of Art. 147.1 (3 months to 3 years' imprisonment or a 6-to-12-month fine), which the court may raise to 2 to 5 years' imprisonment (Art. 148) where weapons or dangerous instruments were used or there was cruelty or treachery—, while the remaining participants can only be charged with the tumultuous brawl. Hence the great practical difference: classification as a brawl, rather than as assault under Art. 147 or 148, may mean several years less in prison.

The defence is built on individualizing authorship and on the elements of Art. 154 itself. Against the prosecution's temptation to attribute the injuries to everyone present, we require the prosecution to prove on an individual basis who caused each injury; where that proof is lacking, there can be no conviction for the injuries and, at most, the Art. 154 brawl offence remains if its elements are met. Conversely, for our client we dispute whether there was really a tumultuous attack (an orderly two-against-one assault is not a tumultuous brawl), whether dangerous means were used —an essential element of the offence—, and whether there was genuine active participation or mere presence. Chronological reconstruction through cameras, witnesses and medical reports is decisive to distinguish the specific aggressor from the mere participant.