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Things have indeed got better since 1996 because red tape was cut in half. Back then, an average civil process in Spain took six years to settle, and only a half of�them were ever actually carried out, according to a study made by the University of Oviedo Law School. With that in mind, it is easy to understand the emergence of the first private arbitration initiatives as a way to settle conflicts out of court. To sum it up, arbitration is a private system for settling disputes, be they between companies or people, in which both sides agree to submit the conflict to a third party they trust, known as the arbitrator. This legal professional has a dual purpose: listen to the two parties and resolve their dispute once and for all.�

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The Law of Arbitration
Since the arbitrator is not a judge, rather than verdicts he issues rulings, which from a legal standpoint are the same thing. The Law of Arbitration gives these rulings, called laudos in Spanish, the same status as a judicial verdict. This means an arbitrator can intervene in any kind of litigation, except cases involving a criminal prosecutor. The Constitutional Court said in a sentence handed down in Oct. 1993 that parties to a dispute can achieve the same goals as with civil jurisdiction, in other words, the same conflict resolution as in a trial. This means that turning to arbitration is the same as turning directly to the Supreme Court, without wasting time in appeals and other intermediate proceedings. For a ruling to be valid, the Law of Arbitration requires that both sides agree in advance and freely with the arbitrator, and commit to respecting the arbitrator's decision.

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Arbitration saves not only money (legal costs are reduced to a minimum) but also time: resolution takes a few months, compared to the years a case takes through ordinary legal channels. The University of Oviedo study said arbitration tends to take less than a year, while appeals cause a normal lawsuit to take 6 years.�

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More and more common
Business caught on immediately to advantages of arbitration in terms of both time and money. So business federations recommend that their members include arbitration clauses in their contracts. Representatives of Chambers of Commerce, for instance, proposed to the Judicial Oversight Board the creation of courts and judges that specialise in arbitration to avoid having the same courts intervene in the same case. There are some arbitration proceedings that do see intervention from the courts, such as replacing the arbitrator when the two sides do not agree on the person appointed, the carrying out of tests, requests for preventive measures or filing of appeals against a ruling. In this way there can be up to three different courts involved in one single case of arbitration. This makes the parties explain several times the details of one case, finding themselves with different points of view on one same ruling.

Doctors also advocate arbitration as a way to resolve their profesional conflicts. The goal is to provide up-front a channel that keeps cases from going to court,� although this alter option is never ruled out for those who prefer court supervision. The Madrid Medical Association has said "arbitration is an instrument of justice with proven efficiency, because the choice of arbitrators is done in light of their knowledge of a subject.