Femenine noun. From the Latin querella, complaint, and this one from the Latin verb queri, to complain. I guess the English term query has the same root, as queri in Latin can also mean ‘to question’.
The Spanish feminine noun denuncia can also be translated into English as ‘complaint, report, claim’, but, in Legal Spanish, querella and denuncia are two very different concepts. Both express the idea of a statement or an account that someone has committed a crime. This statement, in both cases, can be made to either a judge or the police. But, in the querella, the person who makes the statement, called el/la querellante, is the victim of that crime and may or may not be involved in the prosecution. And here we can have, again, two different situations: 1) In delitos de acción privada the querellante activates the proceedings and is personally involved in them. What is a delito de acción privada?: a type of crime that, because it is not considered of such seriousness as to affect the public order of society, cannot be prosecuted ex officio by the public powers (that is, the police, judges or the Public Ministry), but it is necessary the active intervention of the victim as promoter of the action of justice and as part of the judicial process; e.g. defamation: calumnias. 2) In delitos semipúblicos the querella is an indispensable condition to activate the proceedings and, once the querella is made, the victim’s intervention in the proceedings is no longer necessary and they are autonomous from the victim. Although the querellante is not obliged to actively start the prosecution, he/she is not entitled to withdraw the querella; e.g: breach of confidence: divulgación de secretos.
The verb is querellar; and the verb for denuncia is denunciar. The person for denuncia is el/la denunciante. dc

40

SHARES

Share

Share

Share

If you check in your dictionary, you will see that the word mueble, a masculine noun, is translated into English as ‘piece of furniture’, and muebles as ‘furniture’.
In Legal Spanish it is a little bit more complicated. An adjective, from the Latin mobĭlis, movable, transportable, that can be moved.
From mueble we can be infer inmueble, immovable, that cannot be moved. We use them in expressions like bienes muebles and bienes inmuebles: movable and immovable goods. Inmueble as a noun is also used to express the concept of estate or/and property.
The branch of law that studies the legal power that a person exercises over a thing is called Derechos Reales, in Latin Ius in Re, as re in Latin means ‘thing’. From re we can trace república, the public thing, and, in English: Real Estate. dc

40

SHARES

Share

Share

Share

An adjective, fiscal/es, from the Latin fiscālis, related or belonging to the treasury (fiscus in Latin, el fisco in Spanish).
As and adjective, this word can be found in expressions such as Derecho Fiscal, Tax Law; Tribunal Fiscal, tax court; and Agente Fiscal, prosecutor.
Fiscal is also a noun (el/lafiscal los/las fiscales) and it refers to the public official, belonging to the prosecution, that leads the judicial investigation. In criminal proceedings, it is the person who accuses on behalf of the State. It is also used the expression el/la agente fiscal, but it is uncommon.
From fiscal it comes fiscalización, a noun that means audit, inspection; and fiscalizar, a verb that can be translated into to revise, to control or to supervise. Curiously, fiscalización and fiscalizar are not used to refer to the acts of a prosecutor in criminal proceedings; we use indagación and indagar or instrucción and instruir instead. dc

40

SHARES

Share

Share

Share

From Latin, formed by the prefix de, direction from above to below, manus, hand, and dare, to give. It can be translated into English as request, request form, application.
Demanda is a feminine noun (la/una) and in Legal Spanish refers to the written document with which a process normally begins and in which, exposing the facts and the legal bases that are created applicable, the judge is asked for a ruling favourable to a certain claim (entry 9).
Regarding the verb, we usually say demandar but it is also accepted inciar una demanda, interponer una demanda or entablar una demanda. It is important not to go further because no other option is possible; hacer/pedir/requerir/solicitar una demanda are all of them incorrect.
The applicant is called el/la demandante or la (parte) demandante, and the defendant is called el/la demmandado/a or la (parte) demandada. If the last one decides to answer the claim, the verb is contestar a la demanda (not responder). And if the defendant decides to make a counterclaim, it is called contrademandar or interponer una contrademanda and the defendant will be called contrademandante.
In another note, la demanda, in economy, means demand, as opposite to la oferta: supply. dc

40

SHARES

Share

Share

Share

If you check in the dictionary, tipo in English is translated into ‘type’, ‘emblem’, ‘chap’, ‘bloke’, ‘rate’; but, in Legal Spanish it is a completely different story.
A masculine noun (el/un tipo), it comes from the Latin typus, and this last one from the Greek τυπος (typos), model, engraving. It referred to engraved characters on stone.
The English word prototype can be linked directly to the Greek τυπος.
In Legal Spanish, the word tipo refers to the model, the description and definition of a specific conduct for the purposes of imposing the corresponding sanction or consequence (entry 9).
In our legal systems, establishing tipos is very important in criminal law and sometimes in commercial, civil, and tax law. E.g: Article 79 of the Argentine Criminal Code states: Se aplicará reclusión o prisión de ocho a veinticinco años, al que matare a otro siempre que en este código no se estableciere otra pena; Incarceration or imprisonment will be applied from eight to twenty-five years, to the one who will kill another as long as this code does not establish another penalty. The Spanish Criminal Code states in its article 138: El que matare a otro será castigado, como reo de homicidio, con la pena de prisión de diez a quince años; He who kills another will be punished, as a criminal for murder, with a prison sentence of ten to fifteen years. Both articles define manslaughter.
As you can guess, in our system, a code is nothing else than a list of tipos. And this leads us to the word tipificar, a verb that means ‘making up a tipo out of a specific conduct in order to impose a sanction or a consequence’. We call it reducir a un tipo ( and no, reducir does not mean ‘to reduce’). If the conduct is not tipificada (an adjective), then, we do not have a crime and there is no sanction. For someone to commit manslaughter in Spain, their conduct must fall (caer) in the tipo described above; like water in a stone engraving.
All our legal systems are systems of tipos, which pretty much prevent judges to punish conducts which have not been tipificadas. This is particularly relevant today, when cyber-crimes sometimes cannot be punished because of the lack of a tipo.
A real case: On 24th August 1881 a gang called the Night Knights ‘kidnapped’ the corpse of Doña Felisa Dorrego Indart from La Recoleta cemetery, Buenos Aires, and sent a ransom letter (5 million pesos) to her daughter Doña Felisa Dorrego de Miró. The gang was easily caught and prosecuted for robbery and sentenced to prison for 6 years. It could not be considered a kidnapping because a corpse is not a person but a thing. The sentence was appealed because, to be a robbery, the thing must be under the custody of the owner, which was not the case; and besides: who is the owner of a corpse? The higher court revoked the sentence and freed the Night Knights because they had not committed any crime. Soon after the conduct was tipificada, the tipo created and the crime called Secuestro de Cadáver now exists in article 195 of the Criminal Code, best known as article Dorrego. dc

40

SHARES

Share

Share

Share

No matter how long you have been learning Spanish, this word can be very tricky to understand.
From vulgar Latin derectus (classical Latin directus), ‘right’ ‘direct’, past participle of dirigere, ‘to lead’, which comes from regere, ‘to rule’; and rex, regis. All of them express the idea of a movement along a straight line.
Derecho then can be an adjective, translated into English as ‘straight’ ‘right’, ‘fair’, ‘legitimate’; eg. ésta pared no está derecha, this wall is not straight; la orilla derecha del río, the right bank of the river.
It is also an adverb, meaning ‘straight’ in English, e.g. id derecho al asunto, go straight to the point.
And finally, and here resides the trickiness, it can also be a noun, but with two completely different meanings. It means ‘law’, ‘legislation’, e.g. Juan estudia Derecho, Juan studies law; and it also means ‘prerogative’, ‘rights’, e.g. luchamos por los derechos de los animales, we stand up for animal rights. Lawyers call the first definition derecho objetivo, and it must always be in capital letters, because it is a discipline; and the second one derecho subjetivo. dc

40

SHARES

Share

Share

Share