In recent decades, as a consequence of the rising awareness of the damage caused by economic development to the environment, the Spanish legislator has resorted to using criminal law to protect the environment, first, following the guidelines settled by the Council of Europe in its resolutions and its 1998 Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law, which however, never came into force and, secondly, with a deeper impact on the criminal legal system, by the European Union through its Directives, in particular, the Directive 2008/99/EC of 19 November 2008 on the protection of the environment through criminal law.