While the State expands its control and increasingly intervenes in the lives of citizens, regulating even the smallest detail, it flagrantly neglects one of its fundamental pillars: Justice. The 2025 report of the Provincial Court of Barcelona, presented last week by its president Antonio Recio, reveals a desolate picture. Nowadays, a civil lawsuit over a mortgage, abusive clauses, evictions, credit cards... can take up to 12 years to be definitively resolved.
The judicial ordeal is divided into three painful stages: about two years in the court of first instance, another three years to resolve the appeals in the Provincial Court, and a colossal final bottleneck in the Supreme Court, where cases languish for an average of seven years.
The data from Barcelona demonstrates a completely overwhelmed system. Its judges bear a workload 178% higher than that recommended by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), processing an average of 556 cases per judge compared to the set module of 200. The volume of cases continues to grow, soaring from 22,673 in 2024 to 27,869 in 2025. Despite judges increasing their productivity and resolving more claims than the previous year, the backlog of pending cases escalated from 29,751 to 40,138.
To absorb this volume of pending files, three whole years would be needed behind closed doors, without receiving a single new case. Far from that utopia, the forecast for the end of this year is to reach 50,000 pending cases. In light of this scenario, Recio has demanded the immediate addition of 16 judges to the current 56 for 2026, warning that to solve the problem at its root, the actual workforce should double.