A message from ICCA: court decisions from Spanish-speaking jurisdictions for Yearbook 2026

On the occasion of the ICCA Madrid 2026 congress, which took place from 12 to 15 April 2026, ICCA dedicated the first update of the 2026 Yearbook to decisions rendered in Spanish-speaking jurisdictions, enriching an existing collection that includes almost 300 decisions rendered by the courts of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The decisions in this latest Yearbook update directly relate to the Congress theme. Courts across Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and Spain are navigating the same foundational questions as the Congress. When should a local procedural rule give way to an international treaty provision? The Corte Constitucional of Ecuador answered this question in the context of enforcement proceedings, holding that a domestic homologation requirement for foreign awards had to give way to Article III of the New York Convention, which prohibits imposing more onerous conditions on foreign awards than on domestic ones. How should the public-policy exception to enforcement be calibrated so as not to become a vehicle for an unpermitted review of the merits of a foreign award? Two decisions by the Colombian Corte Suprema de Justicia (Zurgroup S.A. v. Importaciones y Exportaciones Fenix S.A.S. and Tricon Dry Chemicals LLC v. Agroindustrias El Molino de la Costa S.A.S.), a decision from the Costa Rican Corte Suprema de Justicia and a decision by the Peruvian Corte Superior de Justicia, as well as decisions from the Spanish courts of Barcelona, Madrid, and Navarre, converge on a consistent answer: public policy means the fundamental principles of the domestic legal order, not a licence to revisit the tribunal’s findings of fact or law.