How long can it take from arrest to being surrendered to another country?

It depends on whether you consent to the surrender. If you consent, the judicial decision must be taken within 10 days. If you object, the general deadline is 60 days, extendable by a further 30 in justified cases. Once the surrender decision is final, the transfer usually takes place within the following 10 days. In practice, deadlines can stretch if there are appeals or missing documentation.

Can I refuse to be surrendered to another EU country?

You can object to the surrender, but not simply because you don't want to go. The objection must be based on one of the grounds for refusal set out in the law: that the offence has already been judged, that it is time-barred in Spain, that there is a real risk to your fundamental rights, among others. Your lawyer assesses whether any of these grounds apply to your specific case.

Can I be surrendered for something that is not a crime in Spain?

For a list of 32 categories of serious offences (terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking, among others) dual criminality is not checked, as long as the offence carries at least three years of imprisonment in the requesting country. Outside that list, if the act is not a crime in Spain the court can refuse the surrender for lack of dual criminality, although it is not obliged to check it in every case. Your lawyer assesses whether this ground plays in your favour.

Is a European Arrest Warrant the same as an Interpol Red Notice?

No. An Interpol Red Notice is an international alert asking authorities to locate and provisionally detain a person, but it does not oblige any country to surrender them. The European Arrest Warrant is a binding judicial decision between EU countries that triggers a surrender procedure with specific deadlines and safeguards.

Can I move around Spain while the surrender is being decided?

It depends on the measures the Audiencia Nacional orders. It can order pre-trial detention, or release you with conditions: surrendering your passport, periodic court appearances, a ban on leaving the country. One thing you must be absolutely clear about: with an active EAW, crossing into another EU country exposes you to a new immediate arrest there, with an additional procedure.

European Arrest Warrant in Spain: What It Is and What to Do

Being served with a European Arrest Warrant is one of the most confusing and frightening situations you can face. Within hours you can be arrested, and within days or weeks you can be on your way to another country without really understanding what has happened or what room you have to react. If you are reading this because it affects you or a family member, the first thing to know is that there is a procedure, there are deadlines and there are rights. Understanding how it works already puts you ahead of most people. And if a warrant is already in motion, understanding is not enough on its own: that is when working with an extradition lawyer in Spain makes the practical difference.

What is a European Arrest Warrant (EAW)?

A European Arrest Warrant is a decision issued by the judicial authority of one European Union country asking another EU country to arrest and surrender a person, in order to prosecute them or have them serve a sentence. It replaces the old extradition system between member states and works in a much faster and more automatic way.

In Spain, the EAW is governed by Law 23/2014 on the mutual recognition of criminal decisions in the European Union, which transposes Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA. The underlying idea is mutual trust between European judicial systems: if a judge in another EU country requests you, the Spanish courts process that surrender unless there is a legal ground to refuse it.

The authority responsible for processing an EAW in Spain is the Audiencia Nacional (National Court), through its Central Investigating Courts.

How is the EAW different from traditional extradition?

The main difference is who decides and how much political margin is involved. Classic extradition is a procedure between states with a political stage, whereas the EAW is a purely judicial procedure, from judge to judge, with no government intervention.

This has important practical consequences:

It is faster. Where an extradition could take months or years, an EAW is resolved in weeks.
It is more automatic. The grounds to refuse to surrender a person are limited and set out in law; there is no broad discretionary margin as in extradition.
The government does not decide. There is no assessment of political convenience, only a review of legality carried out by the court.

That difference is not minor: if you want to see it side by side, I explain the difference between extradition and a European Arrest Warrant and why it changes the whole defence strategy depending on who requests you.

That is why the defence in an EAW is played out on technical ground and within very short deadlines. The difference between staying or being surrendered often lies in whether your lawyer spots a ground for refusal or a defect in the warrant in time. If you need defence right now, this is exactly the work I do as an extradition and EAW defence lawyer.

How does the EAW process work in Spain?

The procedure has a clear structure, even if each case has its own particularities. These are the main stages.

Arrest and appearance before the court

When an EAW is executed in Spain, the person is arrested and brought before the Central Investigating Court of the Audiencia Nacional. At that first appearance you are informed of the existence of the warrant, of the offence for which you are requested, and of your right to consent or object to the surrender.

From the very first moment you have the right to a lawyer and to an interpreter if you need one. It is the most important moment of the process: what is decided here shapes the rest of the procedure. Often the arrest is triggered by an international alert, so if this is your situation it helps to understand how an Interpol Red Notice works and how to remove it, because the alert and the surrender procedure run in parallel.

The deadline to decide on surrender

This is where time becomes a decisive factor. If the person consents to the surrender, the judicial decision must be taken within the following 10 days. If they object, the general deadline to decide is 60 days, extendable by a further 30 days when justified.

Once the surrender decision is final, the transfer to the requesting country usually takes place within the following 10 days. Consenting to surrender is neither good nor bad in the abstract: sometimes it helps, sometimes it is a mistake that closes doors. That decision should be made with proper advice, not out of fear or the rush of the moment.

The deadlines of an EAW, stage by stage

An EAW moves fast, and that speed is part of the problem if you do not react in time. These are the legal deadlines:

Arrest: a maximum of 72 hours before being brought before the Central Investigating Court (Audiencia Nacional).
If you consent to the surrender: the decision must be issued within a maximum of 10 days.
If you object: the decision must arrive within 60 days, extendable by a further 30 in justified cases (90 in total).
Physical surrender: once the decision is final, the transfer to the other country is executed within a maximum of 10 days.

In practice, this means that weeks, not months, can pass between the arrest and being on a plane. The room for a defence exists, but it has to be activated from day one.

Can you object to the surrender? Grounds for refusal

Yes, but the objection is not based on not wanting to go; it is based on specific legal grounds. And here an important precision: not all grounds work the same way. Some oblige the court to refuse the surrender, others merely allow it to refuse or condition it, and there is also a fundamental-rights limit that operates outside that list. Your lawyer has to identify which of these scenarios your case fits into.

Grounds that oblige the court to refuse the surrender

Double jeopardy (ne bis in idem): if you have already been judged by a final judgment for the same facts in Spain or in another EU member state, the court must refuse the surrender.
Pardon: the facts are covered by a pardon in Spain.
Minority: you are under the age of criminal responsibility.

Grounds that allow the court to refuse or condition the surrender

Time limitation under Spanish law: where the facts could also be prosecuted in Spain and the offence or the sentence is time-barred under Spanish law.
Lack of dual criminality: outside the list of 32 categories of serious offences, if the act is not a crime in Spain the court can refuse the surrender. It is not obliged to require dual criminality, but it may do so.
Return guarantees: when a Spanish citizen or resident is requested for prosecution, the surrender can be conditioned on the sentence being served in Spain.
Acts committed in Spain: the facts took place entirely or partly on Spanish territory.
Proceedings open in Spain: there are criminal proceedings open in Spain over the same facts.
Spanish national requested to serve a sentence: you can ask to serve the sentence in Spain instead of being surrendered.
Conviction in absentia: you were convicted in absentia without guarantees of a new trial in the requesting country.

A limit that applies in every case: fundamental rights

Although Law 23/2014 does not list it as one more ground, the courts can refuse or halt the surrender if there is a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment, or of prison conditions contrary to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. It is a safeguard built by the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights, which starts from the presumption that all states respect those rights unless the contrary is proven in the specific case.

Identifying and proving one of these grounds is not simple: it requires accessing the warrant documentation, analysing the law of the requesting country and building the argument before the Audiencia Nacional. It is technical work done against the clock.

What happens after the surrender?

The speciality principle applies: the country that receives you can only prosecute you for the specific facts of the EAW, unless there is later consent or authorisation.
If the surrender was for prosecution (not to serve a sentence), you still have the right to your full defence in that country, and it pays to coordinate the lawyer there from Spain.

What to do if you are served with an EAW

First, and this is serious advice: do not make any decision about consenting to the surrender without having spoken first with a lawyer who knows the procedure. The initial appearance looks like a formality, but things are decided there that cannot be undone later.

Second, gather all the information you have about the procedure in the other country: whether there was already a trial, whether you knew about the case, what offence you are charged with and since when. That information is what makes it possible to assess whether there is a ground for refusal.

And third, act fast. In an EAW the deadlines run from day one, and every day counts to prepare the objection or negotiate the conditions of the surrender. When the case also has a European dimension (several countries involved, doubts about the legal basis of the warrant, possible breach of rights), specialisation in European criminal law stops being a luxury and becomes what makes the difference.

This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Every case has specific circumstances that can completely change the analysis. If you need concrete guidance on your situation, consult a criminal defence lawyer.