Banco de España registers record number of complaints in 2024: how did your bank in Spain fare?
Financial institutions returned more than 5 million euros for claims with resolutions that benefitted customers
C.P.S.
Madrid
Wednesday, 30 July 2025, 14:16
The Bank of Spain registered a total of 56,099 complaints in 2024, beating all records from previous years. The figure is 69% higher than the complaints recorded in 2023. According to the institution, most of the complaints were the result of rulings against abusive mortgage charges.
To be more precise, 51% of the complaints were related to the return of mortgage loan arrangement fees derived from the judicial declaration of unfairness of the contractual clause that regulates them.
However, Banco de España said that these claims correspond to a matter "outside" its competence and are, instead, a matter for the courts. Therefore, the institution rejected 80% of the complaints, although it still carried out an analysis.
The complaints that Banco de España admitted for processing were 11,062, but only 7,915 of them concluded with a reasoned report, which is significantly lower than in 2023. The average processing and resolution period was 47 calendar days - six days shorter than in 2023.
La Rioja, Madrid and Zaragoza
The provinces with the highest volume of complaints (accounting for 53% of the total) were Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza and Alicante. Taking into account the ratio of complaints to population, it can be seen that on average there were 12 complaints per 10,000 residents. Among the provinces with the highest incidence in 2024 were La Rioja (22 per 10,000 inhabitants), Madrid (18), Zaragoza (18), Guadalajara (17) and Barcelona (15). The ratio of complaints was significantly below the average in Ourense (6), Zamora (5), Melilla (5), Lugo (5) or Ceuta (4) stand out.
The institutions with the most complaints were CaixaBank (12,756), BBVA (11,950), Santander (6,713), Sabadell (3,268), Ibercaja (3,122), the Spanish branch of ING (2,744), Bankinter (2,366), Unicaja (2,336), Abanca (1,677) and Kutxabank (1,538).
They were followed by Deutsche Bank España (971), Cajamar (969), Wizink Bank (591), Caja Rural del Sur (420) and Carrefour financial services (339).
