administrative sanctions are a type of administrative act.

There are various elements that determine the characteristics of the administrative sanction:

Through criminal law, the State seeks to protect those legal rights that are fundamental for social coexistence, through the threat and punishment of behaviors that harm them. Compared to criminal law, however, there is also another sanctioning tool at the disposal of the State that, with the modest purpose of ensuring the correct functioning of administrative management, ensures respect for administrative legal norms with the imposition of administrative sanctions, typically fines.

The traditional doctrine considers that the principles that configure and limit the sanctioning power of the administration are the same as those that the Constitution has provided for the exercise of the criminal power of the State, since they would share the same nature.

Thus, the exercise of the administration's sanctioning power is configured and limited by the principles of legality, typicality, guilt or responsibility, proportionality, non bis in idem and prescription "Prescription (law)").[2]​.

The principles on which the sanctioning power of the Administration is based have been taken from criminal law, following the criteria of long-established jurisprudence, by virtue of which it is considered that such principles are fully applicable to the exercise of the sanctioning power of the Administration, as they are common to all punitive activity of the State, regardless of the body that exercises it:.

The sanctioning power of the Administration can be divided into disciplinary power, which consists of the power to impose sanctions on officials and those responsible for offenses committed in the exercise of their positions and is therefore internal in nature. The second class of sanctioning powers refers to the power of the Administration to impose corrections on those administered for acts contrary to what has been ordered and is therefore external in nature.