In a context where civil arbitration in Spain may seem to be on the rise, the country is seeing an increase in efforts designed to impose arbitration, not as a legitimate ADR alternative, but as an inferior forum from which to prevail to the advantage of its proponents and the enrichment of quasi-rogue arbitration institutions.

Faced with a level of unprecedented abuse in consumer arbitration schemes for well over a decade, Legislators amended the consumer protection law to ban pre-dispute arbitration clauses. “Legislators made a historic, momentous decision”, explains José Antonio García, Director of ADR Resources (ARyME), “because they dug out the seed of abuse hidden in the form of unconscionable pre-dispute arbitration agreements designed solely to shamelessly favor corporations over consumers. Paraphrasing the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on franchise agreements, ‘unequal bargaining power […] carries within itself the seeds of abuse’. On this count, Spain reached an intolerable threshold, and Legislators ended it; they had to”.