The COVID fines were the rehearsal

Five years ago, the Tribunal Constitucional struck down Article 7.1 of Royal Decree 463/2020, the article that gave Spain's COVID confinement its legal teeth. More than a million fines had been issued under it. As of late 2025, Hacienda (the Spanish tax authority) has refunded €26 million.

Last month, the Tribunal Supremo finalised the same fate for Madrid's Zona de Bajas Emisiones: 3.3 million fines, €650 million collected. Madrid is not refunding.

Málaga's ZBE expands this autumn. This is the third time in five years.

Three cases. One mechanism.

COVID confinement fines (struck down July 2021). Article 7.1 of RD 463/2020, which sets out the lockdown's mobility rules, was declared unconstitutional. More than a million fines had been written under the void article, and an estimated 80% of all confinement sanctions sat on the same scaffolding. Hacienda has refunded €26 million.

Plusvalía municipal (struck down October 2021). The method used to calculate Spain's IIVTNU (the tax you pay every time you sell or inherit urban property, commonly called plusvalía) was declared null. Thirteen days later, the government replaced it with Real Decreto-Ley 26/2021, a new calculation that produced substantially the same revenue. Years of municipal tax receipts stayed in municipal coffers. The Supreme Court confirmed in June 2025 that only people who had already filed a challenge by 26 October 2021 could recover anything.

Madrid ZBE (struck down April 2026). The Tribunal Supremo last month inadmitted Madrid's appeal against the 2024 sentence that voided the city's Sustainable Mobility Ordinance. The grounds were procedural: the city's economic and environmental impact reports were judged "patently insufficient." Madrid has already passed a new 2026 ordenanza (municipal ordinance) to keep the policy running. It is not refunding the €650 million it collected from 3.3 million drivers.

The mechanism is the same in all three. The state rushes a measure through, often via real-decreto-ley (decree-law, which lets the government legislate without parliamentary debate). It collects revenue and changes behaviour for three to five years. It loses in court. It refuses automatic refunds. It replaces the struck-down rule with a near-identical version. Constitutional Court magistrates have written publicly about the abuso del decreto-ley (abuse of the decree-law mechanism). The pattern is documented and tolerated.

Look at what the state gets in each cycle. Three to five years of revenue. The behavioural change the policy was designed to produce: people stayed home, paid the tax, bought ZBE-compliant vehicles. A replacement statute was already drafted by the time the court ruled. Refunds are capped at a small fraction of those who challenged on time.

Look at what residents get. The fine they paid. A press release explaining why it was unconstitutional. A bureaucratic process to apply for a refund, which most administrations will deny on the first pass. A new version of the same rule.

Hacienda has refunded €26 million for COVID confinement fines. The total collected is in the hundreds of millions. That is not a failed refund process. It is a successful collection process.

One move recovers money inside this pattern, and it has to be made before anyone knows whether the rule will be struck down: appeal every fine.

This isn't legal grandstanding. It's the option value, and the maths is asymmetric in your favor.

Pay a fine within twenty days, and you typically get a 50% pronto-pago (early-payment) discount. The case closes forever. Appeal, and you forgo the discount but keep the file open. If the underlying ordinance is later struck down, as has now happened three times in five years to civilian-facing fines, only open files recover. The Madrid ruling is explicit on this. People who have already paid and never appealed must file a separate revisión de oficio (a review on the administration's own motion) alleging nulidad de pleno derecho (full nullity, the strongest grounds for invalidating an act). The administration almost always rejects it on the first round.

The cost of appealing is essentially zero. A first-stage recurso de reposición (the administrative appeal you file with the issuing authority) is free. You have one month from the date the fine arrives. You can file it yourself with a one-page letter; templates are online. For anything over a few hundred euros, an abogado de tráfico (traffic lawyer) is worth the call. Most charge a flat fee; many work on a no-recover-no-fee basis. If the reposición is denied, you can escalate to a recurso contencioso-administrativo (a judicial appeal in the administrative courts), which costs more, but again, only if you choose to.

The maths, fine by fine. Take a €200 ZBE fine.

Pay within twenty days: €100 paid, case closed forever.

Appeal and lose: €200 owed; case eventually closed.

Appeal and win: €0 owed.

Appeal and the ordinance is later annulled: €0 owed, plus standing to claim back interest.

The expected loss from appealing is the €100 discount you forgo, multiplied by the probability you would have lost anyway. The expected gain is the €200 you save if you win, or if the rule is voided. Three rules struck down in five years means the "rule is later voided" branch is no longer theoretical.

What this looks like in practice. A fine arrives in the post. Traffic, ZBE, parking, plusvalía, anything procedural. Open the envelope and check the deadline first. File a recurso de reposición before that deadline, even with a one-line ground: procedural defect, insufficient signage, vehicle correctly registered, conflicting information from the Ayuntamiento (the city hall). You can decide later whether to escalate. What you cannot do later is reopen a case you closed by paying.

The state's model assumes you will pay because appealing is friction. Reverse it. Make appealing your default. Make paying the exception.

Málaga's ZBE entered its third year of phased expansion this spring. Autumn 2026 brings the next tightening: more vehicles affected, stricter rules, stickers that worked in 2025 expiring under the new criteria. The Ayuntamiento logged 4,894 ZBE fines in December alone (El Español, March 2026). Internal projections put the run rate at 78,900 fines a year, almost 263 a day.

The same zone that fined a 2014 hatchback for entering without an ECO sticker (the DGT label that exempts hybrid and low-emission vehicles) welcomed 26 cruise ships in April. Container traffic at the port, physically inside the ZBE, was up 22.9% year-on-year in the first quarter. Full-export TEUs up 320.7%. None of it counts toward the zone's emissions metrics.

This is the Málaga version of the pattern. The cleanup is performative. The revenue is real. The procedural defect that killed Madrid's ordinance, insufficient economic and environmental impact analysis, is the same defect abogados de tráfico in Andalucía will be hunting for in Málaga's ordenanza over the next twelve months.

This is the kind of municipal-law question we regularly navigate for readers. Which fines are worth appealing? Which abogado de tráfico should I call locally? What the Málaga Ayuntamiento is signalling about its own ordenanza review. We’ll guide you, just €49 a month, flat.

Madrid lost. The fines stayed. Plusvalía was struck down. The tax came back two weeks later. COVID fines were void. €26 million out of billions came back.

The pattern isn't ineptitude. It's a model that works for the state. The maths depends on residents accepting fines without challenging them. The single most useful move you can make, for the €200 ZBE fine, for the €600 traffic fine, for whatever the next iteration produces, is to appeal first. Pay as the exception, not as the reflex.

Not bad for a Monday — A. and the WaypointSur team, briefcases by the door.