Within the framework of the WMO-SPICE (Solid Precipitation Intercomparison Experiment) the Thies tipping bucket precipitation gauge, widely used at AEMET, was assessed against the SPICE reference. Most countries use tipping buckets and for this reason the underestimation of snowfall precipitation is a large-scale problem. The methodology presented here can be used by other national weather services to test precipitation bias corrections and to identify regions where errors are higher.