Article 171 Spanish Criminal Code: Blackmail and Conditional Threats (2026)

Article 171 of the Spanish Criminal Code (CP) completes the system of threat offences. While article 169 punishes threatening harm that would itself be a crime, art. 171 CP covers conditional threats of non-criminal harm, blackmail — demanding money under threat of revealing private facts — and minor threats, with specific rules for gender and domestic violence. As criminal defence lawyers specialised in conditional threats and blackmail, we explain what each section punishes and where the lines of defence lie.

What Article 171 CP Punishes: A Map of the Provision

The article groups conduct of very different gravity:

• Art. 171.1 CP: the conditional threat of harm that does not amount to a crime, where the condition demanded is not something legally owed.
• Arts. 171.2 and 171.3 CP: blackmail (threat of disclosure), with a special rule where what the blackmailer threatens to reveal is an offence committed by the victim.
• Arts. 171.4 and 171.5 CP: minor threats in gender and domestic violence settings, including minor threats made with weapons.
• Art. 171.6 CP: a discretionary mitigation allowing the court to lower the sentence by one degree.
• Art. 171.7 CP: the residual minor offence of threats, prosecutable only upon complaint.

The first question in any defence is therefore one of classification: if the harm announced would itself be a crime — killing, injuring, burning property — the applicable provision is article 169 CP, with markedly higher penalties; if it would not, the case falls under art. 171 CP.

Art. 171.1 CP: Conditional Threats of Non-Criminal Harm

The offence requires three elements:

1. Announced harm that is not a crime: revealing compromising information, cutting off a professional relationship, spreading an embarrassing fact… The harm must be serious and credible, capable of bending the victim's will, even though carrying it out would not be a criminal act.
2. A condition attached: the offender makes the harm depend on the victim doing or refraining from doing something ("agree, or I tell everyone").
3. The condition must not be conduct legally owed: if what is demanded is something the victim is legally obliged to do, the conduct falls outside this offence.

The penalty is 3 months to 1 year in prison or a fine of 6 to 24 months, depending on the gravity and circumstances of the act. If the offender achieves their aim, the penalty is imposed in its upper half: success aggravates the sentence, just as it does under art. 169.

Art. 171.2 CP: Blackmail (Threat of Disclosure)

Section 2 defines blackmail in the strict sense: demanding money or a reward from another person under threat of revealing or spreading facts about their private life or family relationships that are not publicly known and could damage their reputation, credit or interests. It carries the heaviest penalties in the article:

• 2 to 4 years in prison if the offender obtains all or part of what was demanded.
• 4 months to 2 years in prison if not.

The defence must examine whether there was a genuine financial demand (money or a reward), whether the facts belong to the private sphere and were not already public, and whether they were capable of harming the complainant's reputation or interests. In practice this offence overlaps with phenomena such as sextortion and threats to publish intimate images, where other provisions may also apply. We analyse these scenarios on our page on the offence of blackmail.

Art. 171.3 CP: When the Threat Is to Reveal a Crime

What if what the blackmailer threatens to reveal or report is a crime committed by the blackmail victim? Spanish law wants victims to be able to go to the police without automatically incriminating themselves: art. 171.3 CP allows the Public Prosecutor to refrain from prosecuting the offence whose disclosure was threatened, in order to make it easier to punish the blackmail itself. The rule has a limit: it does not apply where that offence carries more than 2 years' imprisonment; in that case, the court may reduce its penalty by one or two degrees. For foreign nationals being blackmailed in Spain, this provision is often the key that unlocks the decision to report.

Arts. 171.4 and 171.5 CP: Minor Threats in Gender and Domestic Violence

Minor threats — intimidating remarks of lesser gravity — stop being a mere minor offence and become punishable with prison when they occur within a couple or a family:

• Art. 171.4 CP (gender violence): a minor threat against a man's wife or ex-wife, or a woman linked to him by a similar emotional relationship even without cohabitation, is punished with 6 months to 1 year in prison or 31 to 80 days of community service and, in every case, deprivation of the right to own and carry weapons for 1 year and 1 day to 3 years, with possible disqualification from parental authority, guardianship or foster care for up to 5 years. The same penalty applies to minor threats against an especially vulnerable person living with the offender.
• Art. 171.5 CP (domestic violence with weapons): a minor threat made with weapons or other dangerous instruments against the relatives and cohabitants listed in art. 173.2 CP (except those covered by section 4) carries 3 months to 1 year in prison or 31 to 80 days of community service, deprivation of the right to own and carry weapons for 1 to 3 years and possible disqualification from parental authority for 6 months to 3 years.

Both sections share an aggravation: the penalties are imposed in their upper half where the act is committed in the presence of minors, in the shared home or the victim's home, or in breach of a penalty under art. 48 CP or an equivalent precautionary or security measure — the classic scenario of a threat made while a restraining order is in force, which may additionally constitute a separate breach offence. As a counterweight, art. 171.6 CP lets the court, giving reasons in the judgment and considering the offender's personal circumstances and those of the act, impose the penalty one degree lower.

In these cases the courtroom battle usually turns on the real intimidating force of the words used: the Supreme Court has confirmed that without objectively intimidating conduct there is no offence, as we explained when commenting on the Supreme Court ruling on minor threats in gender violence cases.

Art. 171.7 CP: The Minor Offence of Threats

Outside all the above cases, anyone who threatens another person in a minor way commits a minor offence punished with a fine of 1 to 3 months. It is prosecutable only upon complaint by the aggrieved person or their legal representative: without a complaint there is no case.

Where the victim belongs to the family circle of art. 173.2 CP, the penalty changes: permanent localisation for 5 to 30 days — always at an address different from and away from the victim's —, community service for 5 to 30 days or a fine of 1 to 4 months, the fine being available only where the circumstances of art. 84.2 CP are met. In these family cases no prior complaint is required.

Defence Strategies Against an Art. 171 CP Charge

1. Challenging the seriousness of the threat: heated remarks made in the middle of an argument, with no real will to cause harm and no capacity to intimidate, do not satisfy the offence.
2. Attacking the classification: the sentencing gap between art. 169 (criminal harm) and art. 171.1 (non-criminal harm), or between art. 171.4 and the minor offence of art. 171.7, is substantial; the defence must push for the correct fit.
3. The condition as conduct legally owed: under art. 171.1, if what was demanded was legally due, the conduct falls outside the offence.
4. In blackmail cases, disputing the elements: no demand for money or a reward, facts that were already public, or facts incapable of damaging the complainant's reputation, credit or interests.
5. Reviewing the evidence: with threats sent by messaging apps and social media, authorship, context and exact wording can all be contested. The distinction from coercion under article 172 CP — which requires present violence rather than the announcement of future harm — can also change the classification.