Sumar wins the legal battle against the Bank of Spain, a body that the financial entities obtained in 2022 and 2023. The Supreme Court has upheld the appeal presented by three deputies from the political party, considering that although said information can be considered confidential according to the provisions of the Credit Institutions Law, this legal reservation does not apply to the case of the Cortes Generales. In this way, the High Court has corrected the criteria of the National Court, which in January 2025 endorsed the banking supervisor’s decision not to comply with the parliamentarians’ request.
In a ruling dated March 3, the Contentious-Administrative Chamber assures that it is “very difficult” for the law to prevent the Congress of Deputies and the Senate from accessing the information available to the Bank of Spain because “the power of the chambers to know information in the hands of the Government and public entities is a crucial element of parliamentary democracy.” In this sense, the magistrates specify that the regulations seek to limit said information from being examined in an “open and public session” and therefore the governor of the Bank of Spain can request that the examination be done in a “secret session” or request the restriction applied by the regulation of parliamentary knowledge of official secrets. “But nothing more,” he concludes.
The political formation required the extraordinary income that banking entities received from the deposit facility, that is, the amounts paid at a determined interest rate for making overnight deposits in central banks. With this formula, the European Central Bank (ECB) tried to stimulate the economy and prevent banks from parking their liquidity, especially in times of difficulties such as the Great Recession or the covid-19 crisis.
During the time that rates were at zero, this figure became negative, which meant that the ECB charged banks an interest rate for having their reserves deposited. However, inflation in 2022, largely caused by the conflict in Ukraine, caused the central bank to raise deposit rates and facilities, causing entities to go from paying for liquidity deposited in the central bank to quickly earning returns on it.
Data from each bank
Specifically, Sumar requested to know the breakdown of the individualized payment for each entity based on this instrument. The then governor, Pablo Hernández de Cos, expressed his opposition to providing this data on the banks’ extraordinary profits in an appearance in Congress in May 2024. “Why can’t we give you the individual data? We are subject to the duty of confidentiality [al respecto]. The Bank of Spain cannot do anything other than comply with it,” said Sumar, who signed the demand.
A few days later, on June 10, Hernández de Cos conveyed the same position in writing to the Congress of Deputies. Although it provided the total balances deposited and the interest paid by the Bank of Spain to all credit institutions, it refused to separate the data by each credit institution, as requested by Sumar, alleging that this could affect monetary policy and professional secrecy. After that, deputies Carlos Martín, Txema Guijarro and Manuel Lago presented the lawsuit before the National Court, which ended with a sentence, handed down in January 2025, which ended with .
This motivated the three deputies to raise the matter to the Supreme Court, understanding that it was necessary to analyze the case and establish jurisprudence on the secrecy of the information held by the institution and its collision with fundamental rights. Now, the Contentious-Administrative Chamber has given the final victory – the ruling is final – to the politicians, who also had – they presented their own appeal to denounce the violation of citizens’ rights, through their parliamentary representatives -, by recognizing their right to obtain the information required within their parliamentary functions.
After reviewing the regulations that regulate credit institutions and the information reserved about them, the court claims to have “no doubt that if the information is required by the plenary session or by a commission of the Chamber, it is ‘the Cortes Generales’ who collect it” and, therefore, the reservation does not affect them. Thus, it points out that the three requesting deputies “are not individuals, but representatives of the Spanish people who exercise an essential function of political control.”
In line with all this, the Supreme Court recalls that article 109 of the Constitution is clear in stating that “the Chambers and their commissions may obtain, through their presidents, the information and help they require from the Government and its departments and from any authorities of the State and the Autonomous Communities.” Thus, it emphasizes that the Bank of Spain is a “State authority” and this cannot be questioned.
