Article 199 Spanish Criminal Code: Breach of Professional Secrecy · Penalties and Defence (2026)

Article 199 of the Criminal Code protects the trust placed in someone who learns intimate details about another person by reason of their work or profession. Unlike Article 197 CP, which punishes anyone who seizes documents or intercepts another person's communications to uncover secrets, Art. 199 CP punishes someone who already legitimately knew the secret and reveals it in breach of the duty of confidentiality that applied to them. As specialist criminal defence lawyers in offences against privacy, we explain the two forms of the offence, the penalties and the key lines of defence.

The Basic Offence: Art. 199.1 CP

The first paragraph punishes with imprisonment of 1 to 3 years and a fine of 6 to 12 months anyone who reveals another person's secrets that they became aware of by reason of their occupation or their working relationships. This is a broad offence, aimed at the worker, employee or collaborator who, without holding the status of a regulated professional, accesses confidential information in the course of their work (a clinic administrator, a bank employee, a personal assistant) and discloses it without authorisation.

Both paragraphs of the article share three elements:

• Existence of a secret: information belonging to a person's private or reserved sphere that is not public knowledge.
• Prior lawful knowledge: unlike Art. 197 CP, the offender does not seize the secret unlawfully, but lawfully learns of it through their occupation, working relationship or profession.
• Revelation or disclosure: communicating the secret to a third party who should not have known it, without the consent of its holder.

The Aggravated Offence: Art. 199.2 CP

The second paragraph substantially increases the penalty for the professional who, in breach of their duty of secrecy or confidentiality, discloses another person's secrets: imprisonment of 1 to 4 years, a fine of 12 to 24 months and special disqualification from that profession for 2 to 6 years. The aggravation is justified because the professional — doctor, lawyer, psychologist, notary, auditor — is subject to a reinforced duty of confidentiality, of legal or deontological origin, which is precisely the basis of the trust the public places in them. In the case of the legal profession, that duty of professional secrecy has been reinforced by Organic Law 5/2024 on the Right of Defence, which strengthens the guarantees of confidentiality in the lawyer-client relationship.

Special disqualification is a significant consequence that sets this offence apart from most crimes against privacy: in addition to the custodial sentence and the fine, the convicted professional is temporarily barred from practising their profession, which in practice adds a reputational and financial sanction on top of the criminal one.

Procedural Requirement: the Prior Report (Art. 201 CP)

The offences under Chapter I of Title X CP, including breach of professional secrecy, are semi-public offences: Art. 201.1 CP requires a report (denuncia) from the aggrieved person or their legal representative before proceedings can be brought. Without that report, there is no criminal procedure, except for three exceptions set out in Art. 201.2 CP:

• The conduct under Art. 198 CP (public official).
• When the offence affects the general interest or a plurality of persons.
• When the victim is a minor or a person with a disability in need of special protection.

In addition, Art. 201.3 CP allows the pardon of the injured party or their legal representative to extinguish the criminal action, subject to the general rules on pardon set out in Art. 130.1.5 CP. This regime reflects that the protected legal interest largely belongs to the sphere of the secret holder's own disposal.

Criminal Defence Strategies

1. Absence of a secret: showing that the disclosed information was already public, well known or common knowledge, so that it did not meet the requirement of being a secret.
2. Consent of the holder: if the affected person authorised the communication of the information, expressly or tacitly, the conduct is not an offence.
3. Lack of the subjective element: a careless or accidental disclosure, without any intention to reveal it, can exclude the intent required by the offence.
4. Absence of the qualified relationship: under Art. 199.2 CP, arguing that the person did not hold the status of a professional subject to a specific legal or deontological duty of secrecy, which would downgrade the conduct, where applicable, to the basic offence of Art. 199.1 CP.
5. Lack of a valid report or a pardon of the injured party already granted, which bar the prosecution of the offence.
6. Limitation period: under Art. 131 CP, the offence becomes time-barred after 5 years from the last act of disclosure, since the aggravated form does not exceed 4 years' imprisonment.

Conclusion

Article 199 CP protects an essential value in professional and working relationships: the trust that sensitive information entrusted to a third party will not be disclosed. The line between a deontological breach (which may lead to a professional sanction) and the criminal offence requires a careful analysis of the nature of the information, how it came to be known, and the specific duty that applied to the person who revealed it. At Alonso Sala we handle both the defence of the professional under investigation and the private prosecution of someone whose secrets have been revealed, assessing the most appropriate criminal route together with possible deontological and civil liabilities. If you need to assess a case of breach of professional secrecy, contact our firm for a confidential review.