Ever since the Entrepreneur Support Act was approved, company records in Spain may only be authenticated in electronic format and must be filed with the Business and Trade Registry online. When the financial year coincides with the calendar year (1 January to 31 December), the entrepreneur must file the records before the end of April.
Company records to be authenticated
- Inventory Book and Financial Statements
- Journal
- Book of Minutes of General Meetings and the corporate bodies
- Register of Registered Shares
- Book of Shareholders (Limited Liability Companies)
- Register of Contracts (only Single-member Companies)
Company records must be filed and authenticated at the appropriate Business and Trade Registry online within a period of four months of the close of the financial year, i.e. before the end of April. It is not possible to authenticate any bound blank records for subsequent use or any non-bound records, which are also blank and consist of loose-leaf pages, for any years beginning on 29 September 2013.
In the event of any loss, leak, physical or electronic destruction or theft of the books of shareholders or registered shares, it is possible to authenticate a book containing the contents of records that have become unusable for one reason or another, provided that the acts indicated above are certified by a police report or by notarial deed. For these purposes, the deed or report will be included in a file appended to the record authentication request.
Any companies that did not authenticate their records after the company was incorporated, either in accordance with previous legislation or the provisions being implemented at present, may include all deeds and ever-changing circumstances of the company from the date of its incorporation up to the year-end date in the first records that are filed online. The probative force of these records will be examined, if necessary, by the Courts.
All commercial documentation generated in the 2015 financial year should be reviewed and all the minutes of meetings and changes of shareholders should be checked.
