Partial Defences Due to Loss of Control and Diminished Responsibility under Spanish Criminal Law

This chapter explains how to approach the treatment which Spanish criminal law gives the cases of decrease in liability for loss of control situations or diminished culpability: the cases of complete defences, including also the characteristics of those same defences when they are incomplete, The mitigating circumstances which are relevant and the focus of cases of partial responsibility for intense emotion. Based on this, the characteristics of the combination required to decrease responsibility, which have been established primarily through case law. The analysis for the cases on which focuses, cases of diminished responsibility is to be referred to the rules for complete exemption, where there is a total disability of the person to behave in another way, that is to act according to the law. Typically, these causal factors come from the victim, as the courts continue to underline, echoing the historical regulation before 1995, which contained two mitigation grounds, replaced by the current art.