The ongoing dispute between the oil distributor Petromiralles and Barclays Bank in Spain centers on the validity and interpretation of a framework agreement tied to currency hedging transactions. A debt of 1.3 million euros emerged from these negotiations, and the Supreme Court has intervened by overturning a Barcelona Court ruling from 2019, directing a new decision that moves away from the bank’s interests and questions the enforceability of the contract in question.
The Supreme Court Civil Chamber, led by the presiding judge Juan María Díaz Fraile, issued a ruling dated September 8 that also acknowledges the implementation of European rules governing the recognition and enforcement of penalties. A British court’s October 2008 decision concluded that the Spanish company had not perfected the framework agreement terms, which meant the arrangement was not binding. Because a clause in the contract mentioned submission to British jurisdiction, that provision was deemed non-binding, and the case was then returned to Spain for further consideration.
On closer inspection, the court found that declaring the contract effective would amount to acknowledging an agreement that lacks binding force and arises from recognizing an English decision. The preliminary English ruling had cast doubt on jurisdiction, creating a potential conflict with Spanish procedural logic.
english document
Analyzing the merits under Spanish law, the court reached a clear conclusion: Petromiralles did not establish a valid framework connection with the bank’s business terms, and therefore no claims could be grounded in that document. The evidence emphasized that the contract was transmitted in English, a factor consistent with the Igualada court’s earlier finding in the first filing of the case.
According to the settled figures, Barclays recovered a total of 1,340,356.71 euros from the Spanish oil company as damages tied to breaches of contracts involving foreign exchange transactions. The transactions involved paying fuel in U.S. dollars while selling to customers in euros, creating currency risk that the bank attempted to mitigate through a specific product offering.
case in england
Barclays initially brought the matter before the Queen’s Bench in the High Court of Justice. Petromiralles opposed the move, arguing that Spanish courts held sufficient authority to hear the claim. In October 2008, a British judge upheld the rejection, holding that the English submission clause in the business terms was not binding since the defendant did not accept it.
When the case progressed to Spain, the Igualada court noted that the decision to contract the banking service was not final, and it dismissed the claim. The later State Court ruling, however, contradicted that view and ordered Petromiralles to pay the 1.3 million euro amount, plus interest and costs. The court maintained that the English decision should not dictate the process and suggested that the framework agreement was implicitly governed by English law, a point that affected the interpretation of the agreement’s binding nature.