Quotation and illustration for teaching: what Article 32 allows

Reviewed as of 1 October 2026. If you spot an error, write to me.

To analyse a work you need to be able to show it, and to teach you need to be able to use other people’s material. Spain’s intellectual property law allows this in Article 32, but under strict conditions. This guide separates the three cases that are often confused: quotation, illustration for teaching and use at university.

Quotation

You may include in a work of your own fragments of other people’s written, sound or audiovisual works, and isolated works of painting, sculpture or photography, without asking permission, if all of these conditions are met:

1. The works have already been made public.
2. You include them as a quotation or to analyse, comment on or criticise them.
3. You do so for teaching or research purposes.
4. You use only as much as that purpose justifies.
5. You give the source and the author’s name.

Analysis is at the heart of a quotation. An image that accompanies a text to decorate it, or that illustrates it without the text discussing it, is not a quotation.

The Supreme Court applied this in 2023 to a 715-page book on Japanese literature that reproduced in full, in a section of texts, an eight-page translation. The publisher credited the translator. Even so, the court held that this was not a quotation, because the text was included to make it known, as in an anthology, and not to analyse it. The publisher was ordered to pay her compensation. Taking up little space within a long work is not enough.

Illustration for teaching

Teachers in formal education, and staff at universities and public research bodies, may use small fragments of works and isolated works of painting, sculpture or photography to illustrate their teaching, including distance learning, or for scientific research, without authorisation or payment, provided that:

• The works have already been made public.
• The use is not commercial.
• The works are not textbooks or university manuals, save for very limited exceptions.
• The author and the source are credited, unless this is impossible.

This exception does not cover everyone who teaches. A private workshop, a course at a private academy or content on social media is not formal education.

At university

Universities may also reproduce a chapter of a book, an article from a journal or an extent equivalent to 10% of the work and make it available to their students, paying remuneration to collecting societies. That 10% exists only in this case. It is not a general rule for quotation.

Neither illustration for teaching nor university use allows fragments of works, or images of artistic or photographic works, to be gathered into a compilation.

Classroom, campus and open web

Showing an image in class is not the same as publishing it on an open website. In 2018 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that uploading to a school website a photograph that was freely accessible on another website requires fresh authorisation. What works for the classroom or for a restricted-access virtual campus does not automatically work for the internet.

Common mistakes

• Assuming that any educational use is permitted.
• Believing that crediting the author turns a complete reproduction into a quotation.
• Applying the 10% for university use to any quotation.
• Extending illustration for teaching to private workshops or social media.
• Using an image as decoration and calling it analysis.

Further reading

• Primary source or back cover.
• How to read the licence of an image and credit it.
• How to declare AI use in academic work.

On the open conversation

This guide is for guidance only. Article 32 is complex and every case depends on its circumstances. If you teach or do research and want to discuss a borderline case, this notebook remains open.

Sources

• Real Decreto Legislativo 1/1996, de 12 de abril, texto refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual, art. 32.
• Tribunal Supremo, Sala de lo Civil, sentencia 724/2023, de 16 de mayo, ECLI:ES:TS:2023:2286 (CENDOJ).
• CMS, ‘Alerta de Propiedad Intelectual | Ley 21/2014 de 4 de noviembre’.
• Court of Justice of the European Union, Renckhoff, C-161/17.