The Spanish courts and the golden thread: the return of the presumption of innocence?

Of all the fundamental rights enshrined in the Spanish Constitution, one of the most precious to the competition lawyer is the right to the presumption of innocence provided for in the second paragraph of Article 24. 

That right has been repeatedly found, by both the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, to require a competition authority, when imposing fines after an administrative investigation, to provide sufficient evidence to prove the existence of the infringement. Moreover, the traditional case law required them to do so ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’, even if, in recent cases, the Courts have appeared to migrate towards the somewhat lesser standard of a ‘firm conviction’ that the infringement took place.