La función delimitadora de la audiencia previa

One of the noveltis of the Civil Procedural Law 1/2000 of January 7th, 2001 is the introduction of an oral preliminary hearing after the parties' initial allegations. In creating the 2001 law, the legislator created several goals of this preliminary oral hearing, which range from conciliation to the dispute, to the proposition and admission of evidence, to that of eliminating procedural obstacles and identifying the issues in dispute. In this article, we analyze the legislative goal of clearly identifying the issues in dispute in the preliminary hearings, a goal that is secondary to that of eliminating procedural obstacles, but with higher importance than that of proposing and admitting evidence. In practice, the goal is realized differently from court to court due to the fact that both the judge and the parties are granted a significant amount of power during this satge. Firts, the article describes the legislative goal of identifying the issues in dispute. Next, the article separately analyzes each provision contained in articles 426 though 428 of the Civil Procedural Law 1/000, ranging from additional argument to the parties' initial allegations to a second conciliatory option. Finally, this article attemps to underline the great potential of the oral preliminary hearing, particularly in identifying the disputed facts, a requisite prior to admitting evidence at trial.