Reference translation. The legal and commercial terms are based on Chilean legislation as published by the Library of the National Congress of Chile and were checked against UNTERM, the United Nations terminology database, which includes ECLAC’s terminology, where it records the term, and against the legislation of the United States for English and of Brazil for Portuguese. These terms may vary from country to country: information in languages other than Spanish is provided for reference only and should be verified by specialized translators in each country. If the versions differ, the Spanish text prevails.

Pedimento and manifestación: differences, steps and deadlines

The constitution of a mining concession begins with a court filing: the pedimento, if an exploration concession is sought, or the manifestación, if an exploitation concession is sought (Mining Code, art. 35). Both are filed with the civil judge of first instance (juez de letras en lo civil) for the place where the center point of the pedimento or the point of interest of the manifestación is located (art. 37). This guide compares both filings and summarizes their steps and deadlines; the general framework is in What is a mining concession and how is it obtained?

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Main differences

What is obtained: The pedimento leads to an exploration concession, which lasts four years from its judgment and may be extended once for up to four more years (Mining Code, art. 112). The manifestación leads to one or more pertenencias, of indefinite duration (Law No. 18,097, art. 17).
How it is located: The pedimento states the coordinates of the center point (punto medio) and the area, of up to 5,000 hectares; each pedimento applies for a single concession (art. 43). The manifestación states the province and the coordinates of the point of interest (punto de interés), the number and names of the pertenencias and the area of each, up to a maximum of 1,000 hectares in total (arts. 44 and 45).
Ground: A square whose diagonals cross at the stated point or, if so requested, a rectangle, with two sides oriented UTM north–south and a length-to-width ratio of no more than five to one (art. 46). Each pertenencia constituted will have a maximum of ten hectares (art. 28).
Application fee: It is paid only once, in hundredths of a UTM per full hectare, on a scale that rises with the total area: from half a hundredth to four hundredths for pedimentos and from one to five hundredths for manifestaciones (art. 51).

If the filing does not state the datum of its coordinates, PSAD56 is assumed, or SAD69 if the point lies south of latitude 43°30′ South (arts. 43 and 45; Mining Code Regulations, art. 16; see Coordinate system). If the coordinates of the center point or the point of interest are omitted, the judge treats the filing as not having been made, and an error or imprecision in them cannot be cured (art. 49).

Priority between applications

A pedimento or manifestación over ground already covered by a pedimento or manifestación is valid, without prejudice to any existing preferential rights (art. 40). To constitute the pertenencia, preference goes to whoever first files the manifestación; if the manifestación is filed in exercise of the right granted by an exploration concession in force, this must be stated, and the filing date of the pedimento is taken as the filing date (art. 41). While the exploration concession is in force, only its holder may file a manifestación within it (art. 114). Preference may be lost or altered by later actions, such as failing to file a timely opposition to another party’s survey (art. 65), and in the event of a dispute it is determined by the judge. The visible date of an application is not enough to conclude who has preference.

Common steps

Filing. The court clerk certifies the day and time of filing (art. 47).
Review by the judge. If the filing meets the requirements, the judge orders it to be recorded and published; if it has defects, the judge orders them to be cured within eight days, and if they are not cured, the filing is treated as not having been made (arts. 48 and 49).
Application fee. It is paid within thirty days after filing (art. 51).
Recording and publication within the deadline. When the court orders the pedimento or manifestación to be recorded and published, both steps must be completed within thirty days from the date of that ruling (art. 52). Holidays are counted in this period (Civil Code, art. 50).

The two steps must be planned together: first, the recording is made in the Discoveries Register of the Mining Registrar (Conservador de Minas), and then a full copy of that registry entry is published in the Official Mining Bulletin (Boletín Oficial de Minería). This is why the time the Registrar takes to deliver the registry entry must be taken into account.

The Official Mining Bulletin is published on the first día hábil of each month and the first días hábiles of each week (art. 238), and the Code does not provide for the deadline to be extended if there is no issue on its last day. Publication requests are submitted to the regional or provincial officer in charge of the Bulletin for the area, and each officer has their own publication days, submission hours and cut-off dates. On the official website of the Diario Oficial (Chile’s Official Gazette), which publishes the Official Mining Bulletin, check the submission deadlines and the officer for your area, and confirm that officer’s publication days and cut-off dates directly with them before submitting the publication.

Holidays do not suspend the statutory deadline, but there is no Bulletin issue on those days, and the officer’s submission deadlines are counted in días hábiles. If there are holidays within the period or near its end, fewer issues are available and the request must be submitted earlier.

Submitting the documents before the deadline is not enough: the publication must appear in an issue released within the statutory deadline. It is therefore advisable to start both steps well in advance, without waiting for the last days.

The certified copy of the registry entry and the Bulletin issue in which it was published are submitted to the court with the request for judgment, in the case of the pedimento, or with the survey request, in the case of the manifestación (arts. 55 and 59). For the Bulletin, submit the original PDF downloaded from the Diario Oficial or Official Mining Bulletin website: printed or scanned copies have no legal validity.

Once recorded, the pedimento and the manifestación are real and immovable rights, transferable and transmissible (art. 54).

Who can file, and when are legal sponsorship and a power of attorney needed? The pedimento or manifestación may be filed personally by the interested party or by another person validly acting on their behalf. To file the pedimento, the manifestación or the filing that cures its defects (art. 49), it is not necessary to appoint a sponsoring lawyer or to confer a litigation power of attorney (art. 36; Law No. 18,120, art. 2). Those requirements must be met in the first subsequent filing.

Keep the first subsequent filing in mind. If it is not sponsored by a qualified lawyer, the court will treat it as not filed; if the power of attorney is not legally constituted, the court will order it to be constituted within the period stated in the ruling, which the law sets at three days, under the same penalty (Law No. 18,120, arts. 1 and 2). Check the deadline in the ruling and do not wait until the last day. Since that filing is usually the request for judgment or the survey request, which have non-extendable deadlines, it is advisable to have the sponsorship and the power of attorney ready beforehand.

Sponsorship and power of attorney are not the same. Sponsorship (patrocinio) is the involvement of a qualified lawyer who takes on the legal direction of the matter. The litigation power of attorney allows a qualified person to act in the proceedings on behalf of the interested party. The same person may hold both roles. If the holder is a company, the authority to represent it (personería) of the person acting on its behalf must also be proven.

How is a litigation power of attorney granted? The Chilean Code of Civil Procedure (art. 6) accepts as a sufficient power of attorney a public deed executed before a notary (notario) or a Civil Registry officer, a record drawn up before a judge of first instance (juez de letras) or an arbitrator, and a written statement by the principal authenticated by the clerk of the court hearing the case. Law No. 20,886 (art. 7) also allows it to be constituted electronically: with the principal’s advanced electronic signature, their personal appearance is not required; with a simple electronic signature, the principal and the attorney-in-fact must ratify it. Sponsorship may also be constituted with a simple or advanced electronic signature; if it is simple, the lawyer must ratify it before the court’s attesting officer (ministro de fe) by videoconference.

What happens if someone files on another person’s behalf? It is necessary to distinguish whether that person has a sufficient power of attorney or must prove or cure their representation: failing to attach a power of attorney does not make that person an agent acting without a mandate (agente oficioso). The Mining Code provides for a special situation: anyone may file a pedimento or manifestación in another person’s name even if they are not that person’s attorney-in-fact, and in that case the interested party must ratify what was done before the court clerk within thirty days of filing, a deadline that the Code establishes as non-extendable (arts. 39 and 237). This ratification is different from those required for sponsorship or a power of attorney granted with a simple electronic signature.

If the court raises an observation on sponsorship, power of attorney, authority to represent or ratification, review the ruling and comply with it within the applicable deadline: the deadlines and consequences are not the same in all cases.

After the pedimento: the request for judgment

Within ninety days from the ruling that ordered recording and publication, the applicant must request the constitutive judgment, over all or part of the ground applied for. The request states the UTM coordinates of the vertices and attaches, among other supporting documents, proof of payment of the application fee and of the prorated annual fee (patente proporcional) and a plan (art. 55). SERNAGEOMIN reports within sixty days; if it raises observations, the applicant has thirty days, counted from the date of the court ruling that gives the applicant notice of them, to comply with them or to object to them on reasoned grounds, after which the judge issues the judgment. If the judge does not issue it within sixty days, the applicant must ask the Court of Appeals, within the following fifteen days, to set the judge a short deadline; if the applicant does not do so, their right lapses (art. 57).

After the manifestación: the survey request

Between days ninety-one and one hundred twenty, inclusive, counted from the filing of the manifestación with the court, the applicant must request the survey (mensura), stating the coordinates of the vertices, designating the engineer or surveyor (perito) and providing supporting documents equivalent to those for the pedimento (art. 59; Regulations, art. 23). Then come the publication of the request, the opposition period, the survey on the ground, the submission of the survey record and plan, SERNAGEOMIN’s report and the judgment, which are explained in Survey (mensura): what it is, when it is requested and how it is done.

Manifestaciones prior to 2024. The window of days 91 to 120 for requesting the survey and the ten-month period for submitting the survey record and plan come from Law No. 21,420 and have applied since January 1, 2024; previously, they were days 200 to 220 and fifteen months. Proceedings that were pending on that date continue to be governed by the rules in force when they began (Law No. 21,420, tenth transitory article, in the text established by Law No. 21,649).

Non-extendable deadlines. Deadlines that the Code sets with the words “en” (in) or “dentro de” (within) are non-extendable (art. 237), and failing to meet them may lead to the lapse of the rights under the pedimento or manifestación (art. 86). To schedule publications, see the paragraph “Recording and publication within the deadline”. For more details, see Non-extendable deadlines and lapse in the constitution of concessions.

How PMD helps you

Map: shows granted concessions and pending applications, with status filters, so you can review the area before filing.
Design tools: depending on your plan, draw pedimentos or manifestaciones, individually or in groups; estimate the application fee and the annual fees; and generate the filing to submit it through the Oficina Judicial Virtual.
Bulletins: browse Official Mining Bulletin publications by date and locate them on the map.
Concession record and monitoring: the record brings together the timeline of each application, and monitoring alerts you to new publications, overlaps and deadlines for your favorite concessions.

Main legal framework: Law No. 18,097, the Organic Constitutional Law on Mining Concessions; the Mining Code, Law No. 18,248, as amended by Laws No. 21,420 and No. 21,649; and its Regulations, Supreme Decree No. 1 of 1986, as amended by Supreme Decree No. 10 of 2024, according to the text published by the Library of the National Congress of Chile. Review: October 23, 2026.