The first meaning of the contentious term mentioned in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) refers to the adjective that allows qualifying the individual who usually contradicts everything expressed by the rest of the people.
The notion, which comes from the Latin word contentiōsus, is also used as a synonym for dispute or confrontation. In Spain, for example, a conflict that exists by the administration of the Treviño enclave, which belongs to the province of Burgos but is within the territory of the province of Álava, is known as the Treviño dispute.
This is a dispute in which the proposal of the Burgos Provincial Council and the Junta de Castilla face, who defend that the situation remains as it is, and that of the municipalities of La Puebla de Arganzón and Condado de Treviño, as well such as the Provincial Council of Álava and the Basque Government, who demand that the territory be segregated from Burgos to be annexed to the province of Álava. This conflict also manifests itself in other areas, such as the management of public roads, services, linguistics and politics.
The relationship between Castile and Treviño dates from the 12th century, at first as royal territory (the places that depend directly on the king, who assumes the role of jurisdictional lord) and later as mayorazgo (a system of distribution of goods through which eldest son benefits), by Manrique de Lara. When the current division into provinces was created in 1833, Treviño was assigned to that of Burgos.
The dispute that confronts these parties in the dispute over this territory is not based on merely historical issues, but on the relationships that exist between the enclave of Treviño and its neighbors, both from a linguistic, cultural and commercial point of view. It is important to mention that local people have demonstrated on more than one occasion in favor of the territory being annexed to the Basque Country.
The most frequent uses of contentious, however, appear in the field of law. An appeal, a process or a contentious matter is one that is subject to the analysis and decision of a court as a litigation that exists between parties, unlike the matters that await an administrative procedure and those that are of voluntary jurisdiction.
Therefore, the jurisdiction exercised as a judgment on the competing rights or claims of different litigating parties is called contentious jurisdiction. The judicial procedure before this jurisdiction is called contentious, while the judgment on the things that motivate the litigation is called contentious trial.
Finally, the term contentious-administrative refers to the jurisdiction that controls that administrative actions are carried out in accordance with the law and subject to the corresponding purposes. It can be said that the contentious-administrative jurisdiction regulates the activity of the public administration in relation to its contentious function.
As expected, there are several types of contentious-administrative appeals, and the way they are processed is different in each case. One of the most common occurs when a party is not satisfied with a given administrative act. For this to take place, it is necessary that the appealed act has put an end to the administrative process. In the list of cases that respond to these characteristics, the most normal is the one in which an appeal is presented (the one that seeks that an administrative body carry out the review of an act issued by another that is below it in the hierarchy) before the organ that has dictated it.
