Criminal Lawyers in Damage Crimes

The crime of damage (Arts. 263 to 267 of the Spanish Criminal Code) is one of the classic types against property and, paradoxically, one that has undergone the greatest technical evolution in recent decades. The protected legal interest is the material integrity of others' property: the holder's right that their assets retain their substance, value and utility. The provision punishes those who "cause damage to another's property not included in other titles of the Code". Consolidated Supreme Court case-law requires three cumulative elements: animus damnandi (intent to harm), third-party ownership of the asset (one does not damage one's own property) and objective impairment resulting in destruction, rendering useless or loss of value.

The Code articulates several modalities with different intensity. The basic type of Art. 263.1 punishes damage whose amount exceeds €400 (below this threshold the minor damage offence applies). Art. 263.2 contemplates aggravated subtypes where circumstances concur such as affectation of public-domain or community-use assets, critical infrastructure, historical, artistic or cultural heritage, or where the damage leads to the victim's ruin or disrupts an essential service. Art. 264, transposing Directive 2013/40/EU, sanctions computer damage: deletion, alteration or suppression of data, programs or systems; Arts. 264 bis and 264 ter aggravate the penalty when damage affects critical infrastructure or is committed through denial-of-service attacks. Art. 266 sanctions damage committed through fire, explosion or analogous means dangerous to life or integrity. And Art. 267 regulates serious negligent damage, demandable only when the amount exceeds €80,000.

Penalties are moderate in the basic type but can scale dramatically. The damage of Art. 263.1 carries a 6 to 24 months' fine; aggravated subtypes of Art. 263.2 raise the penalty to 1 to 3 years' prison and 12 to 24 months' fine. Basic computer damage (Art. 264.1) sanctions with 6 months to 3 years' prison; in its aggravated form (Art. 264.2), it can reach 2 to 5 years' prison. Damage by fire or explosion under Art. 266 punishes with 1 to 3 years' prison, aggravated up to 6 years if risk to life concurs. Serious negligent damage provides for 3 to 9 months' fine. On all penalties, civil liability operates consisting of reparation of the damage caused, valued according to the actual cost of replacement or repair, including materials, labor, transport and VAT.

Technical defense is built on several consolidated axes. The first is the absence of animus damnandi: accidental, fortuitous damage or that caused by simple slight negligence does not integrate the intentional type; the Supreme Court rigorously distinguishes between direct intent, dolus eventualis and negligence, and the boundary is decisive because it excludes criminal liability. The second is the challenge to expert valuation: repair invoices presented by the victim often include items not strictly linked to the damage caused; a defense expert allows adjusting the actual amount and, in many cases, placing it below the €400 threshold (minor offence) or the leap to aggravated subtype. The third axis is the concurrence with other types: when damage is produced as a means to another crime (theft with force, trespass), the absorption principle of Art. 8.3 CP usually excludes double sanction except for objective disproportion. The fourth is the reparation of damage before trial: judicial deposit of the full amount enables the highly qualified mitigating factor of Art. 21.5 CP, which can reduce the penalty by one or two degrees. And the fifth is the requalification to minor offence (Art. 263.1 second paragraph) when the amount does not exceed €400 or when it concerns the defacement of Art. 263.1 in fine.

Current forensic practice is marked by two relevant trends. On the one hand, the sustained increase in computer-damage cases: DDoS attacks against companies, ex-employee sabotage with privileged knowledge of systems, ransomware with data destruction, manipulation of critical databases; Directive 2022/2555 NIS2 and its transposition into Spanish legislation reinforce protection standards and criminal response to these attacks. On the other hand, the tougher criminal response to forest fires, with restrictive case-law that rigorously differentiates serious negligence from fortuitous event and has led to relevant convictions in large summer fires. At Alonso Sala we intervene with official appraisal experts to challenge inflated valuations, forensic IT experts to reconstruct digital attack chains and fire-investigation experts to discuss causality. We treat each file with the conviction that in damage crimes the difference between a moderate fine and effective prison usually depends on two factors: precise legal classification and rigorous quantification of damage.