Asset class
Crowdinvesting in Spain
What decides whether a Spanish crowdinvesting position can be enforced is not the platform's terms of use. It is which layer of the deal was actually recorded: the underlying instrument (equity in a vehicle, a participative loan, an ordinary loan) and whoever holds custody of it. A missed payment traces back to that layer, not to the portal that sold the deal.
Register and custody layer
Spanish crowdfunding platforms operating as PFP (plataformas de financiación participativa) are supervised for conduct, not for the solvency of what they sell. The instrument behind a listing is usually one of three things: shares or participations in a special-purpose vehicle, a participative loan, or a straight loan agreement. Each has a different register. Company shares sit in a shareholder ledger or, for sociedades anónimas, in book-entry form; loan agreements often exist only as a private contract, sometimes raised to a notarial deed, sometimes not. What the custody arrangement actually means for a claim is the register that decides who can be sued, and on what basis, when the platform stops answering.
The document rarely handed over
Most investors hold a subscription confirmation, a dashboard screenshot, or an email. They rarely hold the signed loan agreement, the SPV's articles, or the security package, if one exists, that sits between the money and the borrower. This matters because a claim against the platform is usually a claim against the wrong party. Identifying the real counterparty in a crowdinvesting structure starts with locating that missing contract, not with re-reading the platform's marketing page.
What belongs in a pre-deal report
A file review before anything is sent to the other side should establish, at minimum: the identity and legal form of the actual counterparty; the custody statement covering the full period from subscription to the first missed payment; whether the underlying contract carries a venue or jurisdiction clause, and what it says; and the solvency and insolvency status of the vehicle, not the platform. Where documents cross borders, their formal standing also matters: Spain has applied the Apostille Convention since 25 September 1978, subject to the reservation it declared, which is why a foreign-issued document intended for use in a Spanish proceeding, or the reverse, needs to be checked against that status before it is relied on. [N407]
A paid initial assessment does not estimate what a claim is worth. It establishes which of these points are already answered by the paperwork the investor holds, which are missing, and what a factual report covering the counterparty, the custody layer, and the enforcement route would need to close before any letter goes out. Related mechanics for Spain sit under crowdinvesting and platform debt, cross-border payment disputes under payment and redemption defaults, and how to check who is actually reviewing the file under verifying a law firm before instructing one.