The CENDOJ case law search engine is the free website of the Consejo General del Poder Judicial (CGPJ, Spain's General Council of the Judiciary) for looking up judgments and court orders, already anonymised, at poderjudicial.es/search/indexAN.jsp (in Spanish). Type words in Texto libre (free text) or an identifier in Nº ROJ or ECLI, narrow it down by court and dates, click Buscar (Search) and open the decision as a PDF.
It is a website, so it works the same on Windows and on Mac, in the browser. This guide walks through the form as it was on 23 October 2026, with what its official help says and what we checked by running real searches that day. The site is in Spanish, so we give the field names as they appear on screen, with their meaning in English.
What is CENDOJ and which rulings does its search engine hold?
CENDOJ (Centro de Documentación Judicial, the Judicial Documentation Centre) is the technical body of the CGPJ that publishes Spanish case law. Article 619 of the Ley Orgánica del Poder Judicial (the Spanish Judiciary Act) entrusts it with “the selection, organisation, processing, dissemination and publication of legislative, case law and doctrinal legal information”, and the CGPJ explains that it disseminates it “to all citizens, universally and free of charge” through poderjudicial.es.
According to the CENDOJ page, the public database, called «JURISPRUDENCIA» (case law), includes:
- All the decisions of the Tribunal Supremo (the Spanish Supreme Court).
- The judgments of the other collegiate courts: the Audiencia Nacional (National High Court), the tribunales superiores de justicia (TSJ, the regional high courts of justice) and the audiencias provinciales (provincial courts).
- A selection of decisions of single-judge courts (juzgados) “of greater legal, doctrinal, social and/or topical legal interest”. Not all the decisions of the juzgados are there.
All of them are anonymised. CENDOJ explains it like this: “the names have been replaced and the remaining personal data of the natural persons who are parties to the proceedings have been hidden”. That is why the search engine is no use for finding a case by the name of a private individual who was a party: that name is no longer in the published text.
How far back the decisions go: the Histórico (TS) box searches the Supreme Court's historical collection («Buscar hasta 1978 inclusive», search up to and including 1978, says its label); in our test, the oldest was STS 1/1852, of 7 October 1852. Without that box, the oldest Supreme Court judgment it returned was from January 1979, and the oldest from the Audiencia Nacional, SAN 1/1978. In the provincial courts the volume changes a lot from year to year: the search engine returned 720 decisions from 1995 and more than 162,000 from 2000. For an old case, don't assume the collection is complete.
What is not there: neither the Tribunal Constitucional (Constitutional Court), which has its own constitutional case law search engine (in Spanish), nor the Court of Justice of the European Union. Nor the Fondo Documental CENDOJ (CENDOJ document collection) with the legal analysis of each decision: according to the CGPJ, it is offered “in the restricted environment for the judiciary”. The «Buscador Fondo Documental-Jurisprudencia» page on poderjudicial.es actually leads to this same public search engine. There are also AI case law search engines from private companies; this guide covers only the official one.
How do you search case law on CENDOJ, step by step?
The CENDOJ search engine is used in seven steps, and it does not ask you to register to search or to open decisions.
- Open poderjudicial.es/search/indexAN.jsp (in Spanish). If an Aviso legal (legal notice) box appears, close it with the X.
- In Búsqueda por texto libre (free text search), type the words you are looking for, or the exact phrase in quotation marks.
- Narrow it down with the drop-down lists: Jurisdicción (jurisdiction), Tipo res. (type of decision), Tipo de órgano (type of court) and Localización (location).
- If you have an exact detail, fill in Nº ROJ, ECLI, Nº Resolución (decision number) or Nº Recurso (appeal number).
- Click Buscar (Search) or press Enter. With the form empty, the search engine replies «Por favor, especifique algún criterio para su búsqueda» (please specify a search criterion).
- In Resultados (results), sort by Coincidencia (relevance), fecha de resolución (decision date), Lo más nuevo (newest) or órgano (court), and choose 10, 20, 30 or 50 per page. On the left, FILTROS (filters) groups them by Jurisdicción, Resolución (decision), Órgano (court), Año (year) and Ponente (reporting judge): tick what you want and click Filtrar (Filter).
- Click the title of a decision to open it in the Documento (document) tab.
These are the fields of the form, with their names as they appear on screen:
| Field | What it is for | Example or note |
|---|---|---|
| Texto libre (free text) | Searches the body of the decision | Y, O, No and Próximo buttons (and, or, not, near) next to the box |
| Jurisdicción (jurisdiction) | Civil, Penal (criminal), Contencioso (administrative), Social (employment), Militar (military) or Especial (special) | Several at once allowed |
| Tipo res. (type of decision) | Auto (order), Sentencia (judgment) or Acuerdo (resolution), with subtypes | Orders admitting or refusing to admit an appeal, and cassation judgments (L.O. 7/2015) |
| Tipo de órgano (type of court) | Supreme Court, Audiencia Nacional, TSJ, Audiencia Provincial, juzgados and military courts | Several allowed; each court also by chamber |
| Sección (section) | Section number, which you type in | 28 |
| Localización (location) | Autonomous community, province and seat, as a tree | Several locations allowed |
| Nº ROJ | National identifier of the decision | STS 3877/2014 |
| ECLI | European identifier, exact search | ECLI:ES:TS:2014:3877 |
| Fecha resolución (decision date) | Desde (from) and Hasta (to), with a calendar | dd/mm/yyyy or dd-mm-yyyy |
| Nº Resolución (decision number) | Number of the judgment or order | 564/2014 |
| Nº Recurso (appeal number) | Number of the appeal or proceedings | 660/2013 |
| Ponente (reporting judge) | Reporting judge, with autocomplete | Several reporting judges are combined with O (or) |
| Idioma (language) | Español, Català, Galego or Euskera | Todos (all) by default |
| Legislación (legislation) | Only decisions that cite the chosen law | Chosen in a law search box, also by article |
| Marcas (tags) | Interés TS (Supreme Court interest), Actualidad (topical), Igualdad de género (gender equality), Discapacidad (disability), Lectura fácil (easy read), Histórico (TS) | Limit results to what CENDOJ has tagged that way |
The juzgados appear with their usual name and with the name of the section of the tribunal de instancia (court of first instance), for example «Juzgado de lo Social / Tribunal Instancia Sec. Social».
What are the ROJ and the ECLI, and how do you find a judgment with them?
The ROJ and the ECLI are the two identifiers of each decision: one national and one European. With either of them you get to the exact judgment without going through the free text.
- ROJ (Repositorio Oficial de Jurisprudencia, the Official Case Law Repository) is the national identifier that CENDOJ assigns to the decisions of Spanish courts, “from the courts of first instance to the Supreme Court”, according to the Spain page of the European e-Justice Portal. In the ones we have seen, it starts with S for a judgment (sentencia) and A for an order (auto), continues with the initials of the court (with the province or the autonomous community when needed) and ends with the number and year.
- ECLI (European Case Law Identifier) is the common European Union format which, according to the e-Justice portal, “has been created to facilitate the correct and unambiguous citation of judicial decisions”. The Spanish one has five parts: «ECLI», the country (ES), the court code, the year and a number, which is the same as in the ROJ. For orders, an A is added at the end.
| Decision (checked on 23 October 2026) | ROJ | ECLI |
|---|---|---|
| Judgment of the Supreme Court, Civil Chamber, of 14 October 2014 | STS 3877/2014 | ECLI:ES:TS:2014:3877 |
| Order of the Audiencia Nacional of 29 October 2015 | AAN 199/2015 | ECLI:ES:AN:2015:199A |
| Judgment of the Provincial Court of Navarre of 21 January 2020 | SAP NA 1/2020 | ECLI:ES:APNA:2020:1 |
| Judgment of the Provincial Court of Madrid, Section 28, of 26 June 2026 | SAP M 8402/2026 | ECLI:ES:APM:2026:8402 |
Searching by ROJ
Type the ROJ in Nº ROJ without the word «ROJ:» in front. With «STS 3877/2014», the search engine returned the judgment; with «ROJ: STS 3877/2014», the prefix used in the example of its own help, it returned «No se ha encontrado ningún resultado» (no results found). Also watch the space between the initials of the court and those of the province (SAP NA, not SAPNA). If you only have the number, «3877/2014» returns every decision with that number and year in any court: in our test, 18.
Searching by ECLI
In ECLI the search is exact: you have to type the full identifier, with or without «ECLI:» in front (both forms worked). The official help allows a wildcard in the year: «ES:TS:*:3877» returned 44 Supreme Court judgments with the number 3877, each from a different year. If the format is not valid, for example with spaces instead of colons, the field is marked as wrong and the search does not run. How to use the ROJ and the ECLI inside a brief is another subject, which we cover in how to cite court rulings.
How do you filter by the Audiencia Nacional or by provincial courts?
The Audiencia Nacional and the provincial courts are chosen in the Tipo de órgano drop-down list; for the provincial courts, you also tick the province in Localización.
- Audiencia Nacional: in Tipo de órgano, choose «Audiencia Nacional» for the whole court, or one of its parts: Sala de lo Penal (Criminal Chamber), Sala de Apelación de la Audiencia Nacional (Appeals Chamber), Sala de lo Contencioso (Administrative Chamber), Sala de lo Social (Employment Chamber), or the juzgados centrales (central courts: investigating, criminal, administrative, juvenile and prison supervision).
- Provincial courts: in Tipo de órgano, «Audiencia Provincial» (or «Audiencia Provincial. Tribunal Jurado», the jury court). Then, in Localización, expand the autonomous community and tick the province or the seat. If you are interested in a specific section, type its number in Sección.
We checked it with the Provincial Court of Madrid, Section 28, and the words «clausula suelo» (floor clause): 4,372 results, and the PDF of the first one said «Sección: 28». The same method works for the high courts of justice (Tipo de órgano «Tribunal Superior de Justicia» and the community in Localización). If you have already searched without narrowing down, the Órgano filter in the left column does the same on the results.
How do you download a CENDOJ judgment as a PDF?
The CENDOJ search engine opens each decision as a PDF; you download it from the browser's PDF viewer.
- Click the title of the decision. It opens in the Documento tab, inside the browser's PDF viewer.
- Download it with the viewer's download button. In Chrome, which is where we checked it, it is the arrow at the top right, next to the printer.
- If your browser does not show the PDF inside the page, the site itself offers a link: «puede descargar la resolución aquí» (you can download the decision here).
The PDF is served with the ROJ as its file name (STS_3877_2014.pdf), so when you save it you already know what it is. Above the document there are icons for Escuchar resolución (listen to the decision), sharing it, copiar enlace (copy link: a permanent link to that decision, useful for the case file) and Abrir el documento en nueva ventana (open the document in a new window).
The first page of the PDF has a summary sheet with the Roj, the ECLI, the Id Cendoj, the court, the seat, the section, the date, the appeal and decision numbers, the procedure, the reporting judge and the type of decision. It also has Resoluciones del caso (decisions in the case): in STS 3877/2014, for example, the judgment of the Provincial Court of Jaén and a Supreme Court order in the same case appear.
One limit to bear in mind: the search engine's legal notice says that users may consult the documents “for their private use” and that “use of the database for commercial purposes, or the mass downloading of information, is not permitted”.
What operators and search tricks does CENDOJ accept?
CENDOJ accepts quotation marks, the operators Y, O, NO and PROX (and, or, not, near) and two wildcards, according to its official help:
- Several words are combined with Y: you get the decisions that contain all of them, in any order.
- Plurals are included automatically: «lesión» (injury) also retrieves «lesiones». In quotation marks, only the exact form.
- Quotation marks for the exact phrase, with the words in that order and next to each other, including stop words («el», «en», «para»), which are ignored outside quotation marks.
- Accents and capital letters don't count.
- Operators: Y (AND), O (OR), NO (NOT) and PROXn (NEARn), which finds words n words apart or fewer. Without a number, PROX means 20. If you type them instead of using the buttons, use capitals.
- Wildcards: the asterisk replaces several characters («*este» finds Nordeste and Sudeste) and the question mark, a single one («Gr?cia» finds Gracia and Grecia). The form allows at most 8 asterisks and reminds you that they are not needed for plurals.
To see the effect, on 23 October 2026 we searched for «clausula suelo» (without the accent, which doesn't count) in the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court:
| What we typed in Texto libre | Results |
|---|---|
| clausula suelo | 9,890 |
| clausula PROX5 suelo | 8,851 |
| "clausula suelo" | 8,733 |
| clausula suelo NO hipoteca | 5,831 |
Three more things worth knowing:
- Type the dates in full. If you put only «2020» in Desde and Hasta, the form turns it into 01/01/2020 in both fields and you are searching a single day. For the whole year: 01/01/2020 and 31/12/2020.
- The text box has a microphone for dictating the search if the browser supports speech recognition; the help warns that Firefox does not support it.
- Alerts notify you by email when a new decision matching your search is published. You create them with «Crear alerta» (create alert), below the filters, and they require registering with an email address and a password.
After the search engine: the case notes and the brief, dictated
CENDOJ gives you the decision; what comes next is writing. First, the notes on what each judgment is useful for in your case, with its ROJ so you can find it again. Then, the brief.
With ablalo you can dictate those notes in Spanish while you read the PDF («ablalo, apunta…», ablalo, note…, saves a note) and then the brief in Word or in any program on Windows and Mac: the text appears where the cursor is, punctuated, with more than 30,000 Spanish legal terms recognised out of the box. If you name an article («insertar artículo 1902 del Código Civil», insert article 1902 of the Civil Code), it pastes its literal text from the BOE (Spain's Official State Gazette), for 50 laws. Your voice is transcribed on your computer. And if what you have is the recording of a hearing or of a meeting with the client, its Hearings tab transcribes it without uploading it to any server. ablalo does not search case law or read the judgment's PDF: that part is still CENDOJ. The method for dictating a whole brief is in how to dictate a legal brief, and what to check before signing, in the most common legal writing mistakes.
In short
The CENDOJ case law search engine, at poderjudicial.es/search/indexAN.jsp, gives free access to the decisions of the Supreme Court, the judgments of the Audiencia Nacional, the TSJ and the provincial courts and a selection of those of the juzgados, all anonymised. To go to a specific judgment, type the ROJ without «ROJ:» in front, or the full ECLI; to narrow down, use Tipo de órgano, Localización and Sección, and full dates. The decision opens as a PDF and you download it from the browser's viewer.
Sources: CENDOJ, case law search engine (form, results, document and legal notice) and its official help; CGPJ, Case law (CENDOJ), CENDOJ: mission and structure, Legal analysis and Document collection search engine: case law; BOE, Organic Act 6/1985 on the Judiciary, article 619; European e-Justice Portal, European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) and ECLI in Spain; Tribunal Constitucional, constitutional case law search engine. All in Spanish. Checked on 23 October 2026; the test searches and their figures are from that same day.
Frequently asked questions
Is the CENDOJ case law search engine free?
Yes. The CGPJ disseminates case law “to all citizens, universally and free of charge” on poderjudicial.es, and you don't need to register to search for and open decisions. Only the email alerts ask you to create an account with an email address and a password.
What is the difference between the ROJ and the ECLI?
The ROJ is the national identifier assigned by CENDOJ (for example, STS 3877/2014) and the ECLI is the European identifier of the same decision (ECLI:ES:TS:2014:3877). In Spain the ECLI number is the ROJ number, and for court orders the ECLI ends in A.
Can you search case law by registration number?
The CENDOJ form has no field called registration number. It has Nº ROJ and ECLI, which identify the decision in the database, and Nº Resolución and Nº Recurso, which are the court's numbers. Use whichever appears on the document you have.
Why can't I find a judgment by its ROJ?
The most common reason is typing «ROJ:» in front: in our test, «ROJ: STS 3877/2014» returned nothing and «STS 3877/2014» did. Also check the space between the initials of the court and those of the province (SAP NA 1/2020), or try the ECLI.
Does CENDOJ have every judgment of the juzgados?
No. According to CENDOJ, the public database has all the decisions of the Supreme Court, the judgments of the collegiate courts (Audiencia Nacional, TSJ and provincial courts) and a selection of decisions of the juzgados (single-judge courts) of greater legal, social or topical interest.
Do the names of the parties appear in CENDOJ judgments?
Not those of the natural persons who are parties. CENDOJ explains that all the published decisions are anonymised: it replaces the names and hides the other personal data so that they cannot be identified.
Where do you search for Constitutional Court judgments?
They are not in the CENDOJ search engine. The Tribunal Constitucional (Constitutional Court) has its own constitutional case law search engine (in Spanish), with judgments, orders and declarations, which also lets you search by ECLI.