Spain: revolving cards and the usury rulings
Spain has no statutory interest cap on cards. What it has instead is a line of Supreme Court rulings on revolving credit built on a law from 1908, the Ley Azcarate, under which a rate "notably higher than the normal rate of money" and disproportionate to the circumstances is usurious. A usurious credit is not merely capped: the contract is void as to interest, and the borrower repays only the principal.
The court has applied this repeatedly to tarjetas revolving, using the average rate for that specific product published by the Banco de Espana as the benchmark rather than the average for consumer credit generally. Since a judgment of February 2023 the test has been arithmetic: a revolving card is usurious if its APR runs more than six percentage points above the Banco de Espana average for that product at the time the contract was signed. That single criterion replaced years of inconsistent county-court rulings and has produced a large volume of reclamation cases against Spanish issuers.
Because the benchmark is an average that moves, the ceiling is a judgment rather than a number, and it sits above the market rate rather than at it. The 20% the calculator opens on is roughly where mainstream Spanish revolving rates have settled, not the point at which a rate becomes unenforceable; the usury line sits about six points higher and shifts every time the Banco de Espana publishes.
Issuers typically require about 3% of the balance a month, with the month's interest taken from within it and a floor of about €20.