Homicide in Spain


Homicide, according to the Spanish Criminal Code of 1995, is a crime which contravenes the legal right to "independent human life". It is found in article 138 which states: "Whoever kills another shall convicted of manslaughter, punishable with a sentence of imprisonment from ten to fifteen years".
The main legal concept in article 138 is bad faith. It may be present in any form, whether direct or indirect. The active subject as well as the passive subject are universal, meaning that either can be any person, regardless of the circumstances.
Homicide committed by grave recklessness is covered in article 142, which includes both reckless homicide by weapons or motor vehicles and homicide caused by professional recklessness. It states:
It is necessary to indicate that under Spanish law, involuntary homicide is not regulated; in the majority of cases the law that will be applied will be somewhere between homicide and the criminal concept which is involved.
Other specific concepts, such as parricide and uxoricide also do not exist, since in Spanish criminal law the punishment is founded in the violation of the legal right and not the fact of killing one particular person or another. For these cases, the circumstances of kinship, found in article 23, could be used as aggravating.