Continuing Offence (Art. 74 CP): When Several Acts Are Punished as One

If several similar acts — payments, card charges, transfers, invoices — follow the same plan or exploit the same opportunity, the Spanish Criminal Code does not add them up one by one: it punishes them as a single continuing offence (delito continuado, Art. 74 CP), with the penalty for the most serious act imposed in its upper half. That classification changes three things: the sentence, the amount taken into account in offences against property, and the day on which the limitation period starts to run.

Faced with a statement of charges (escrito de acusación) listing twelve transfers or fifteen card payments, the intuitive reaction is to count offences; Art. 74 CP does the opposite and groups them into a single offence.

What Art. 74 CP says: the text of its three subsections

The wording in force comes from Organic Law 15/2003 and has applied since 1 October 2004. This is our translation of the consolidated text published in the Spanish Official State Gazette (BOE):

• 74.1: “Notwithstanding the provisions of the preceding article, a person who, in carrying out a preconceived plan or taking advantage of an identical opportunity, performs a plurality of acts or omissions that harm one or several persons and infringe the same criminal provision or provisions of an equal or similar nature shall be punished as the perpetrator of a continuing offence or misdemeanour with the penalty set for the most serious infringement, which shall be imposed in its upper half and may extend to the lower half of the penalty one degree higher.”
• 74.2: “In the case of offences against property, the penalty shall be imposed taking into account the total harm caused. In these offences the judge or court shall impose, giving reasons, the penalty one or two degrees higher, to the extent it deems appropriate, if the act is of notorious seriousness and has harmed a generality of people.”
• 74.3: “Offences against eminently personal rights are excepted from the provisions of the preceding subsections, save those constituting offences against honour and against sexual freedom and integrity that affect the same victim. In such cases, regard shall be had to the nature of the act and of the provision infringed in order to apply continuity or not.”

The text still refers to a continuing misdemeanour (falta): Organic Law 1/2015 abolished misdemeanours but did not amend this article. The “preceding article” referred to in subsection 1 is Art. 73 CP, which adds up the penalties for all the offences.

You are accused of several similar acts: what a continuing offence is

A continuing offence is a legal construction that treats as one offence what are naturally several. The reason is twofold: to avoid the disproportionate result of simply adding up dozens of penalties, as Art. 73 CP would do, and to recognise that the repetition responds to a single decision or a single opportunity, not to independent criminal decisions.

In Spanish law the term covers separate acts grouped into one; an offence that simply lasts over time is a different figure, the permanent offence (delito permanente).

The requirements of a continuing offence (Art. 74.1 CP)

• Plurality of acts or omissions. Acts separable in time, each with its own standing. If there is a single act, there is nothing to group.
• A preconceived plan or taking advantage of an identical opportunity. These are alternatives, not cumulative requirements. The second is the one most often applied: the offender repeats the conduct because the same situation — the same job, the same access, the same trust — puts it within reach again.
• Regulatory homogeneity. The same criminal provision, or provisions of an equal or similar nature. Literal identity of the article is not required, but the offences must protect the same legal interest in an equivalent way.
• One or several victims. The law expressly allows a plurality of victims, with the exception in subsection 3.

The law does not list the indicators of a plan or of an identical opportunity: they are inferred from the acts themselves, such as the time between them or the repetition of the same method. A long gap or a change of method works in favour of the defence.

What is the penalty for a continuing offence?

The penalty set for the most serious offence in the series is imposed in its upper half, and the court may go as far as the lower half of the penalty one degree higher. Continuity comes at a cost: the minimum is higher than for an isolated act. Halves and degrees are calculated under Art. 70 CP, within the sentencing rules of Art. 66 CP:

These are the theoretical ranges under subsection 1. Each band starts one day after the previous one ends because the day is indivisible (Art. 70.2 CP), and the lower limit of the penalty one degree higher is the statutory maximum plus one day (Art. 70.1, rule 1, CP). Where it is the sum itself that takes the offence into theft under Art. 234.1 CP or into aggravated fraud, there is a nuance explained below.

Offences against property: total harm and the mass offence (Art. 74.2 CP)

Art. 74.2 CP contains the rule with the most practical consequences: in offences against property the penalty is imposed taking into account the total harm caused. A series of small charges, withdrawals or invoices stops being assessed one by one and is assessed as a sum.

The sum can move the case into a higher category. Several thefts that individually do not exceed €400 — a minor offence (delito leve) punished under Art. 234.2 CP with a fine of one to three months, calculated under the day-fine system — can be classified as a single continuing offence of theft under Art. 234.1 CP, with 6 to 18 months’ imprisonment, if the total does exceed that figure. The same threshold separates minor fraud from basic fraud in Art. 248 CP. This is backed by the Supreme Court’s non-jurisdictional plenary agreement (Acuerdo del Pleno no jurisdiccional) of 30 October 2007, quoted below: in offences against property the basic penalty is set by the total harm caused, not by the most serious offence. Where it is the sum that turns the acts into a less serious offence, the same agreement allows the defence to oppose also imposing the upper half under Art. 74.1 CP.

The same subsection adds a reinforced aggravation, usually called the mass offence (delito masa): the judge or court must impose, giving reasons, the penalty one or two degrees higher if the act is of notorious seriousness and has harmed a generality of people (generalidad de personas). These are two cumulative requirements, not alternatives, and express reasoning for them is required in the judgment.

Continuing fraud: how the amounts in Art. 250 CP come into play

Fraud is the natural territory of the continuing offence: the same deception repeated with several customers. Basic fraud under Art. 248 CP carries 6 months to 3 years’ imprisonment; with continuity, the amounts are added together, and the total decides the category:

• More than €50,000 or a large number of people affected: aggravated fraud under Art. 250.1.5 CP, with 1 to 6 years’ imprisonment and a fine of 6 to 12 months.
• More than €250,000: Art. 250.2 CP, with 4 to 8 years’ imprisonment and a fine of 12 to 24 months.
• Particular seriousness, given the scale of the loss and the financial situation in which it leaves the victim or their relatives: Art. 250.1.4 CP.

If it is the sum itself that has taken the act into the aggravated category, also imposing the upper half under Art. 74.1 CP may clash with the prohibition on assessing the same factor twice. The plenary of the Supreme Court’s Second (Criminal) Chamber settled the criterion in its non-jurisdictional agreement of 30 October 2007, which reads, in our translation: “A continuing offence is always punished with the upper half of the penalty. In offences against property, the basic penalty is determined not by the most serious offence but by the total harm caused. The first rule, Art. 74.1 CP, ceases to apply where applying it would breach the prohibition on assessing the same factor twice.” It is a calculation to be done with the statement of charges in front of you. The total-harm rule applies in the same way to computer fraud under Art. 249 CP: charges on someone else’s card or unauthorised transfers.

Eminently personal rights: the exception in Art. 74.3 CP

Subsection 3 excludes from continuity offences against eminently personal rights — life, physical integrity, freedom — with two express exceptions: offences against honour and against sexual freedom and integrity that affect the same victim. In those cases the provision neither imposes continuity nor bars it: it orders that regard be had to the nature of the act and of the provision infringed in order to apply it or not.

The practical consequence is that several assaults on different people are not grouped together: they are tried as independent offences, with accumulation under Art. 73 CP.

Continuing sexual offences: the same victim

In repeated sexual assaults on the same victim, common in settings of cohabitation or trust, continuity is possible but not automatic, and two recent rulings set out the criterion. The Supreme Court judgment of 12 March 2026 (appeal 8303/2023) accepts a continuing offence even where the dates are not specified for each episode, provided the proven facts clearly describe differentiated episodes and a sufficient time sequence, and holds that the most serious act draws in the rest. Another Supreme Court judgment of 13 April 2026 (appeal 4211/2023) recalls, in sexual assaults on a minor, that the preconceived plan and the identical opportunity are alternatives and that the victim must be the same.

For the defence, the narrative of facts is the central point: a prosecution that only refers to “numerous occasions”, without distinguishing any episode, weakens the evidence of each act and the continuity itself.

Continuing offence vs real, ideal and medial concurrence: the differences

The concurrence of offences under Arts. 73 to 77 CP (concurso de delitos) has its own guide; these are the differences that decide the sentence:

• Repeat offending is not continuity. In theft and fraud of €400 or less, Arts. 234.2 and 248 CP (as worded by Organic Law 1/2026) impose the penalty for the basic offence on anyone with final convictions for at least three offences of the same nature, at least one of them minor: this is the multiple recidivism rule of Organic Law 1/2026. A continuing offence, by contrast, groups acts that have not yet led to any conviction.
• Permanent and habitual offences. In the first, the unlawful situation continues without the act being repeated, as in an unlawful detention; in the second, repetition is an element of the offence itself, as in habitual domestic abuse under Art. 173.2 CP.

Related offences in the same proceedings: connection under Art. 17 LECrim

A continuing offence punishes several acts as one; connection (conexidad) is a procedural rule for trying several offences in the same case. Under Art. 17.1 of the Criminal Procedure Act (LECrim), each offence gives rise to one case, but connected offences are investigated and tried together where joint investigation and evidence help to clarify the facts, unless this would make the proceedings excessively complex or slow.

Connected offences include, among others, those committed by two or more persons acting together, those committed as a means of perpetrating others and those committed to secure impunity for other offences (Art. 17.2). Art. 17.3 also allows, at the request of the Public Prosecutor, unconnected offences committed by the same person that are analogous or related to each other to be tried together, if they fall to the same court.

Trying several offences together does not turn them into one: each keeps its own penalty. Connection does have two consequences worth knowing: for connected offences the limitation period is that of the most serious offence (Art. 131.4 CP), and if there were convictions in separate proceedings for acts that could have been tried together, Art. 988 LECrim allows the Art. 76 CP cap on the time to be served to be set afterwards through the accumulation of sentences.

Limitation period: the clock starts with the last act

Art. 132.1 CP establishes that in cases of a continuing offence the limitation periods run from the day the last offence was committed. This is one of the reasons the classification matters so much: acts from years ago, time-barred if looked at individually, remain live if they form part of a series that reaches recent dates.

The reverse works the same way. If the defence manages to break the continuity — showing that between the first acts and the last there is neither a plan nor an identical opportunity — the oldest ones may fall outside through limitation.

The length of the period depends on the penalty the law sets in the abstract for the offence, not on the one finally imposed (non-jurisdictional plenary agreement of the Supreme Court’s Second (Criminal) Chamber of 16 December 2008, which upholds the one of 29 April 1997). And the offence taken into account is the one the judgment finds was committed: under the agreement of 26 October 2010, aggravated classifications rejected by the court do not count, and where there is a concurrence of offences or connected offences, the most serious of those found to have been committed is used. If the sum that supported aggravated fraud is not proven, the period is the one for basic fraud.

Two further points. If the victim of an offence against sexual freedom was under 18, the period starts to run when the victim turns 35 (Art. 132.1, third paragraph), a rule that only applies to acts committed from 25 June 2021, when Organic Law 8/2021 came into force; the Code does not expressly say how this rule combines with the last-act rule where the series continues after the victim turns 18. And in a continuing offence of false accusation, STS 50/2026, of 28 January, counted the period from the date on which the order confirming the dismissal of the main case became final, not from the complaints (denuncias). The periods for each offence are set out in the guide on when a criminal offence becomes time-barred.

Examples: when there is a continuing offence and when there is not

What the defence looks at

• Whether the prosecution describes the series or simply assumes it. Continuity requires a narrative of facts that identifies each act. A statement of charges that speaks of “multiple transactions” without specifying them is vulnerable.
• The link between the acts. Changes of context, long interruptions, different methods or different beneficiaries weaken both the preconceived plan and the identity of opportunity.
• The sum that supports the aggravated category. In offences against property, each disputed item that is knocked out reduces the total harm, and with it the jump in category can fall too. If the prosecution seeks both the mass offence under Art. 74.2 CP and aggravated fraud for affecting a large number of people (Art. 250.1.5 CP), check that the plurality of victims is not being counted twice.
• The comparative calculation. Work out the figures with and without continuity before setting the procedural position, including any possible plea agreement (conformidad).
• The mitigating circumstances. Continuity does not rule them out: in a conviction for continuing embezzlement of public funds, STS 486/2026, of 8 July, applied the mitigating circumstance of reparation of harm (Art. 21.5 CP) for a partial deposit that was significant and made before the trial. They should be built into the comparative calculation, together with undue delay (Art. 21.6 CP).

If you are under investigation for a series of acts that the prosecution presents as a single continuing offence, the time to challenge the classification is before the defence submissions are filed, not when the defendant is given the last word at trial. You can contact us on +34 91 078 65 74.