A deportation order can be fought — in 48 hours, not next week.

Assume it is shorter than you think. If the file was opened under the preferential procedure — which is the common one — the period to file allegations is 48 hours from notification. If an order has already been issued, appeal deadlines are typically measured in weeks from the day you were served. We do not guess at this: send us the document and we will confirm your exact date, because the single most expensive mistake in this area is spending the deadline looking for a lawyer.

No. An order is a decision, and decisions in Spanish administrative law can be challenged and can be suspended. Expulsion also is not automatic even when an offence is proven: the administration has to weigh proportionality and your personal circumstances, and orders are regularly annulled for failing to do that properly or for imposing expulsion where a fine would have been the correct sanction. What is true is that doing nothing converts a challengeable decision into a final one.

Expulsión is a sanction imposed at the end of an administrative file for an offence under the Ley Orgánica 4/2000 — most often irregular stay. Devolución, under article 58, is not a sanction at all: it is applied to people intercepted crossing irregularly or returning while an entry ban is in force, and it moves faster with fewer procedural steps. They feel identical when they happen to you and they are defended differently, which is why the first thing we do is read your paperwork rather than your account of it.

An expulsion generally carries a ban on entering Spain and the wider Schengen area, as a general rule for up to five years, extending further in the gravest cases. The length is set in the order itself, which means it is one of the things an appeal can attack. Separately, once a ban is running there are routes to have it revoked or to have its remaining period reconsidered, particularly where circumstances have changed or where the ban has already run most of its course. It is worth asking rather than assuming the decade is written.

It can change a great deal, and it is exactly the kind of fact that gets ignored unless someone puts it in the file with evidence attached. Family and social ties — children in Spanish schools, a Spanish or resident partner, years on the padrón, medical treatment here — go to the proportionality of the sanction, and they are among the strongest arguments against expulsion. They only count if they are documented and filed in time. Tell us about them at the first conversation, not the third.

That is most of our work. Everything is handled in English, and if a family member is the one calling us — which is usually what happens — we deal with you directly and keep you informed. If the person is currently held at a police station or facing an internment order, that is a separate emergency with its own clock: see our page on urgent assistance for someone detained by the police, and call rather than email.