As of November 9, notaries will be able, for the first time, to process contracts, establish companies, or appoint administrators electronically, remotely. They will do so through videoconference and the authorization and signing of the documents required in each case will be carried out through the electronic notarial headquarters, which is accessed through the Citizen’s Notarial Portal.
In this way, Spanish notaries will respond to the requirement of the European Union (embodied in Directive 2019/1151) to allow any citizen to establish a limited company in another member country without the need for physical presence, a requirement that was incorporated into Spanish legislation last May (Law 11/2023) giving notaries six months to adapt their computer systems and apply it.
“Videoconferencing will make it possible to expedite corporate procedures that are urgent for companies, or resolve corporate situations in which it is difficult to bring together all the people who would be present in person, because legislators have extended the possibility of using telematic means to more procedures than the mere constitution of companies that the directive required,” comments José Alberto Marín, dean of the Notarial College of Catalonia, who has participated from the beginning in the process of digitalization of notarial actions.
However, in this list of procedures that can be resolved entirely online there are practically none of those that are most frequently carried out by individuals, such as signing sales, loans or wills.
“The legislator has opted for prudence because advising and verifying that the people who sign papers do so freely, without being coerced, is a fundamental task of the notary, and through videoconference we only see a plan of the client, we cannot know in what conditions the person on the other side is in and if negative circumstances are occurring that affect their decision,” explains Marín.
For this reason, he says, purely telematic procedures are restricted to commercial documents such as incorporation of companies, capital increases, appointment of administrators, changes of company address, minutes of general meetings… “These are acts signed by the administrator or the secretary of the board of directors, who are people who are familiar with the business and used to dealing with notaries,” he justifies.
One of the few procedures, if not the only one, that individuals can do by videoconference is the processing of powers of attorney “as long as they are not general powers, but for a specific issue, because we consider that in that case the possible negative consequences are more limited”, details the dean of the Notarial College of Catalonia. And it is also expected that wills can be signed in exceptional circumstances of confinement due to the pandemic.
But just because individuals cannot electronically sign marriage, divorce, inheritance or mortgage papers does not mean that they cannot take advantage of the notaries’ digital portal and systems such as videoconferencing to speed up these procedures. All prior advisory interviews, consultation of documents or deeds already signed can be done electronically, and in this way they will only have to travel to the notary’s office on the day of the signing.