Spain
Ley de transparencia, acceso a la información pública y buen gobierno
Ley 19/2013, de 9 de diciembre
Spain's transparency law, filed through the state Portal de la Transparencia. The Ejército del Aire's UFO files were declassified 1992–1999 and are digitised.
The clock
30 calendar days
One month from receipt by the competent body, extendable by another month for volume or complexity; silence is refusal.
Most of what exists on UFOs is already published in the Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa; file only for what postdates the declassified run.
Reading the statute itself
The text of this one is not reproduced here: foreign legislation is published under its own country’s copyright rules, so it is linked instead. Everything on this page — the deadline, the appeal path, the fee standard — is Aletheca’s summary of that text, and the official source is one click away.
If they refuse
- Appeal deadline
- 30 days — one month to bring a reclamación before the transparency council
- Appeal route
- Optional reclamación before the Consejo de Transparencia y Buen Gobierno within a month, then the contencioso-administrativo courts.
- Litigation
- Contencioso-administrativo jurisdiction.
Fees and expedition
Fee-waiver standard
Free; reissue costs may be charged.
Aletheca argues this on every request it files here. A service that publishes every page it receives, free, to a public archive has an unusually strong showing — considerably stronger than a private requester’s.
Exemptions it allows
- Art. 14.1(a) Seguridad nacional
- Art. 14.1(b) Defensa
- Art. 15 Datos personales
Quirks worth knowing
Requests through the portal require identification via the Cl@ve system — the practical hurdle for requesters outside Spain.