Spain. Cartels and Leniency
Jokin Beltrán de Lubiano Sáez de Urabain, Alfonso Gutiérrez.
Spanish law prohibits cartels as part of the general prohibition of anticompetitive agreements. Administrative investigations of cartels are common and, in fact, the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) has declared the 'fight against cartels to be its number one priority in competition enforcement'. Since the adoption of the current Competition Act in 2007, as of 2017, more than 60 cartels had been discovered and sanctioned in Spain with fines totalling over €1 billion. The CNMC continues to pursue cartel investigations: in 2023, the CNMC issued three decisions sanctioning cartels, with two other decisions in 2022 and as many as six cartel infringement decisions issued in 2021.
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