Winning a speeding ticket to the Madrid City Council is easy and even the judges say it: "It does not motivate sanctions"

An agent of the Municipal Police asks a driver for the papers in a control in Madrid. Jesús Hellín

There are days when the Google search engine does not stop receiving queries that have to do with the steering wheel.

In Madrid, for example, the most sought after questions by Madrid drivers are the following: how do I know if I have a traffic ticket from the City Council?

When do City Hall fines expire?

How to pay the City Hall fines?

How long does it take to get the traffic ticket from the City Hall?

To these four searches, we should now add another: why does the City Council lose so many sentences for traffic fines?

According to a count to which EL PAÍS has had access, the Mobility and Environment area of ​​the Spanish capital has been judicially sentenced at least 75 times in just two years for not providing sufficient evidence in the trial.

A record, according to experts and lawyers in the sector.

The last sentence is from just a few weeks ago, on November 22.

The law firm that has achieved this success in front of the Madrid City Council is DVuelta, a mobility company dedicated to the legal defense of drivers specializing in traffic fines, which has already forced the Madrid City Council to change the way it imposes fines, after achieving a historic ruling of the Supreme Court, in February 2009. Or the last, already in 2020, when justice also knocked down Madrid Central due to formal defects.

In the case of speeding tickets, all the sentences highlight the same pattern.

At the time of the trial, the municipal legal services specialized in mobility do not provide sufficient evidence against the driver who has been fined and who has denounced them.

That is to say, when a driver is penalized by the Mobility and Environment area for allegedly going faster than allowed on some of the streets and roads of the capital, most of the hypothetical offenders regularly pay the fine, but whoever does not He does so and enters the bureaucratic labyrinth of the appeal, seeking to defend his innocence or, simply, postpone the payment further in case it expires... it usually expires.

The key is, according to Pedro Javaloyes, spokesman for the DVuelta company, in the type of speeding ticket.

There are two types: generic and specific.

The generic one refers to the usual speed limit of the roads, which is imposed by the DGT: 50 kilometers per hour in the city and in urban two-way streets or 30 if it is one-way, 120 on motorways and dual carriageways. or 90 if they are secondary roads.

But everything changes when the City Council modifies these speeds for other reasons.

If suddenly there is a work on the Gran Vía and traffic is restricted to 20 kilometers per hour for three hours, for example, all those vehicles that circulate there will be fined if they do not reduce their speed.

When the fine comes home with the photo of the car, there are two options.

It can be paid in prompt payment with a reduction of 50%,

If the latter is chosen, the possibility of winning to the City Council opens up, which is what is causing this loss of money to the municipal coffers when it has to pay the costs of the trial.

The City Council, the judges explain, does not provide sufficient evidence of the reasons why that speed was reduced, when it should accredit it in its argumentation.

"The Madrid City Council reviews all the allegations and appeals filed for traffic sanctions," says a spokeswoman for the Environment and Mobility.

"For those resources that are similar, a standard response is given to streamline administrative procedures and answer in the time and manner established by the courts."

The lack of evidence, key

In the more than 70 sentences, the judges indicate that conclusive evidence is not provided.

"The existence of a speed limitation in the section is not proven," reads a sign signed in the contentious-administrative court of Madrid number 23. "The administration did not respond to this allegation of the party, because not even for photograph nor by certification of the authority is an accredited allegation the existence of speed limiting signage”.

There are judges, even, who openly complain that the evidence provided by the Mobility and Environment Area is simply a shot: "A shot to which no virtuality can be granted, not only because of its image quality, but also because It is dated December 2017, that is, on dates prior to the sanctioned infringement”.

Another magistrate concludes: “Citizens deserve something more than the complacent ignorance of their writings.

For this alone the resource deserves to be estimated.

It is worth adding that the Administration, within the scope of a sanctioning procedure in which the precautions and requirements that have been indicated above govern, persists in the action to which unfortunately we are accustomed of not motivating the sanctioning resolutions, which do not respond. to the allegations of the interested party, limiting itself to reflecting absolutely stereotyped resolutions that are inserted in all disciplinary proceedings of the same nature that reach the courts of this city, without making the slightest mention of the allegations of the interested party or to pronounce on the evidence requested by her”.

Namely,

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