UNIVERSIDAD MIGUEL HERNÁNDEZ DE ELCHE(UMH) – Dismissed (Spain, 2021)

A data subject filed a complaint with the Spanish DPA (AEPD) against a university where they had had different roles, ("an employee, an employee with disciplinary proceedings, undergraduate student, master's student, course assistant, interested party in administrative procedures, participant in administrative procedures, participant in selection processes, litigant, opposing party, etc."). The university provided the data subject with certain information (partly non-personal data too) and asked them to specify what additional information they required. They rejected the rest of the generic request with grounds on Article 12(5). The university alleged that they had tried to answer to the request on time but that they didn't have the resources, given that they have 26000 students, 1122 teaching and research staff, 521 administrative staff, 269 project staff; with a teaching structure of 7 faculties, 2 schools, 4 research institutes, 27 departments, 33 services and administrative Units, and 4 management centres, and the data subject had had a role in many of them, as an alumni, worker, and litigant. The controller also held that they were implementing a more efficient system to handle data subject request. They claim that the data subject is just trying to diminish the university's functioning via different requests, claims and lawsuits, also in law fields other than data protection. The data subject reiterated the initial request in the same terms. To this, the controller again alleged Article 12(5) GDPR and stated that it constituted an abuse of rights. The AEPD aligned with the controller and found that the data subject was abusively exercising their rights in bad faith. The AEPD brought forward Article 12(5) GDPR, as well as Article 7 of the [https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-1889-4763 Spanish Civil Code], that states that rights must be exercised in good faith, and that it cannot be done in a way that the natural limits of the right are respect