Administrative Acts: Notification and Publication Requirements
Interested Parties in Administrative Procedures
When is the condition concerned?
- People who request action from the Administration, as well as holders of administrative rights or legitimate interests, are concerned.
- Those who have not applied for the initiation of a case but hold individual rights that may be affected by the decision are also concerned.
- Holders of legitimate interests who did not request the initiation of proceedings, provided that they become involved in the dossier before its conclusion.
The holder of a right will always be considered an interested party. The applicant’s request, known as an application, must be in writing, where an individual asks the administration to initiate a case. In our legal system, upholding the application is very simple, requiring only minimal formal requirements:
- Identification of the applicant (name, address, and method or tool of choice for notifications). The address need not be the place of residence but the place to receive notifications.
- Acts, foundations, and requests in the application.
- Place and date (although the date of entry of the application with the competent body is considered).
If management senses an irregularity in the formal requirements of the application, it cannot reject the application outright. It must grant a minimum of 10 days for error correction.
Notification and Publication of Administrative Acts
Notification and publication are ways to publicize the event to the recipient. Notification is used for individual administrative acts with identifiable recipients. Publication is used for administrative acts with a general target. Notification and publication of documents are conditions of effectiveness (but do not produce the effect).
Purpose, Requirements, and Notification Deadline
Resolutions and acts affecting the rights and interests of stakeholders must be notified. Resolutions must be reported, as must qualified prior acts; other acts do not require notification because prior acts are qualified for appeal. Also, those acts that require a particular performance should be reported.
Acts should be reported to the parties to the proceedings (art. 31 LP):
- Those who promote the procedure as having rights and legitimate interests.
- Those who, without having initiated the procedure, have rights that may be affected by the decision adopted.
- Holders of legitimate individual and collective interests that may be affected and, although they have not started the procedure, are involved in it before the end.
The authority to act in a proceeding may be due to a right or an interest; these are distinct concepts:
- Right: The right exists before the procedure. Example: Property law.
- Interest: Arises at a particular time in response to an action.
Both the owner of rights and the person with an interest may be involved in the procedure. The law differentiates between a holder of rights and a holder of an interest. Both can initiate a proceeding, but the holder of a right is always a participant in the procedure (and must always certify this), while a holder of an interest must become a party to be notified.
The notice may be direct to the subject or their representative. Notification is normally made at the domicile of the subject, and at that address, it is delivered directly to the applicant or any person who is there, previously identified. Telematics notification is also possible, but in this particular case, it must be expressly stated as the preferred method. It is necessary to demonstrate that the document has been opened and to provide a record of what has been received since the notification has specific content as stated in art. 58, paragraph 2:
- Full text of the act.
- Indication of whether the act is administratively final; if it is definitive, there is no possibility of appeal.
- Resources available against the administrative act, the body to which they should be addressed, and the period for appeal.
The body may eliminate some of these elements; in such cases, the notice is defective and, in principle, will not produce administrative effects. Such notification may be effective if the interested party is aware of the defect or knows the law and takes cognizance; if so, it takes effect immediately. In case of an administrative error, the review periods for individuals do not run.
Management uses several languages in notifications. If a state body uses Castilian but is in an Autonomous Community with co-official languages, it can use the second language. If it is for general effect, it will generally be given in Castilian. The notification deadline is 10 days, but this is not an essential term.
Rejection of the Notice
With the reform of the LP in 1992, if there is a rejection of the notification, the Administration considers that the notification was made and rejected. The notification can be replaced by publication on bulletin boards in town halls or in official bulletins in the following cases:
- When stakeholders are unknown.
- When the address of the person concerned is unknown.
- When nobody knows the whereabouts of the person concerned.
Publication
Publication is produced strictly in the following cases:
- Multiple unspecified recipients.
- Selective procedures or competitive tendering. Example: Public examinations.
- When provided by the rule governing each procedure.
- When, for reasons of public interest, notification and publication can be combined.
The law is very sparse on this matter. As publication has the same effect as notification, similar requirements are applied. The content is the same, and the deadline is the same (10 days) from the resolution of the administrative act. In this case, publication is through official gazettes. In cases where both notification and publication are appropriate, the deadlines for appeals begin to run from the most favorable date for that person. For both notifications and publications, the time starts from the day following the notification or publication.