Comunidad de Madrid · Licensed under Ley 5/2014
No coastline, no holiday homes, and a completely different case mix. Madrid work is corporate, financial and documentary — and it is where a great many Spanish records actually live.
It's --:-- in Spain — an investigator is available now.
Foreign clients reach Madrid for reasons that have nothing to do with the reasons they reach the coast. There is no expatriate property belt here and very little holiday-home casework. What there is instead is business, and the central records that govern it.
Three things concentrate in Madrid. The Registro Mercantil Central, which is the national point of reference for company names and incorporations. The Registro General de Actos de Última Voluntad, the central wills registry that every Spanish inheritance has to pass through, wherever the deceased lived. And the head offices of most Spanish banks, insurers and large corporates, along with the embassies and consulates that foreign clients need for legalisation and powers of attorney.
The result is that Madrid cases tend to be corporate investigations, asset and debtor tracing, employee and counterparty verification, and the documentary work that unblocks an inheritance being administered from abroad. Where surveillance is instructed it is usually commercial — sick-leave matters, competition issues, or establishing whether a business is operating as it claims.
The city and the surrounding municipalities where most international residents and corporate headquarters sit:
Civil and criminal first instance proceedings for the city are heard at the courts on Plaza de Castilla, with the Audiencia Provincial de Madrid as the appeal court. Property title is recorded across the numbered Registros de la Propiedad de Madrid.
For foreign instructions the two registers that matter most are national rather than local. The Registro Mercantil Central is where a Spanish company's existence and name are ultimately verified. And the certificado de últimas voluntades — the document that tells you whether a deceased person left a Spanish will and before which notary — is issued centrally from Madrid, no matter where in Spain the death occurred.
Locating parties and establishing what they hold in Spain, usually instructed by a firm rather than an individual.
Whether a company exists, who controls it, what it has filed, and whether its presentation matches its record.
The central wills certificate and the groundwork that lets a foreign executor actually proceed.
Serving documents on a party in Madrid, including where the subject is avoiding it.
Madrid, specifically
The deceased lived on the coast. Why does Madrid come into it?
Because the central wills registry is national. Whatever the address, establishing whether a Spanish will exists runs through that certificate, and it is normally the step foreign families skip because they have never heard of it.
Can you check a Spanish company for us before we contract?
Yes. Incorporation, registered address, directors and filed accounts are matters of public record, and a discrepancy between what a company claims and what it has filed is often the whole answer.
We're a UK firm with a Spanish defendant in Madrid. How does that work?
You instruct in English and receive the report in English; the investigation and the signature are Spanish and licensed, which is what makes the evidence usable here. For law firms
Is surveillance in Madrid different from the coast?
Operationally, yes. Dense urban environments, public transport and enclosed office buildings change how a deployment is structured, and cases here more often turn on records than on observation.
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