Short answer. Yes. Article 1476 treats every lot at an auction as its own contract. Where goods are put up in lots, each lot is the subject of a separate contract of sale, perfected on its own when the auctioneer signals acceptance of the winning bid by the fall of the hammer.
What the law says
Where goods are put up for sale by auction in lots, each lot is the subject of a separate contract of sale.
Civil Code, Article 1476 — Sale by Auction. Read the full provision →
One auction, many contracts
The article is explicit: where goods are put up for sale by auction in lots, each lot is the subject of a separate contract of sale. So a single afternoon at the auction house is not one big sale but a string of independent ones, lot by lot. This is not a mere formality. Because each lot stands alone, the price, the buyer and the terms are settled per lot, and a problem with one lot does not automatically infect the others. Winning the bidding on one item creates a contract for that item only; it neither commits you to, nor entitles you to, any other lot on offer.
When each lot's sale is perfected
Each separate contract comes into being at a definite moment. A sale by auction is perfected when the auctioneer announces its perfection by the fall of the hammer, or in other customary manner. Until that announcement, there is no contract for that lot. Two consequences follow for the bidder and the seller alike. Any bidder may retract his bid before the hammer falls, so a bid is not binding while the lot is still open. And the auctioneer may withdraw the goods from the sale before that same moment, unless the auction was announced to be without reserve.
Bidding by the seller
The article also polices who may bid. A right to bid can be reserved expressly by or on behalf of the seller. But where no notice has been given that the sale is subject to such a right, it is unlawful for the seller to bid himself, or to plant others to bid on his behalf, or for the auctioneer knowingly to take secret bids from the seller's camp. The purpose is to stop artificial inflation of the price by hidden bidding. A sale that breaks this rule may be treated by the buyer as fraudulent — a protection that, like the rest, operates lot by lot.
What the rule does not decide
Treating each lot as its own contract answers a structural question; it does not, by itself, settle every dispute about a lot. Whether the goods conform to their description, whether the price must still be paid on a withdrawn or defective item, and what warranties attach are governed by the ordinary law of sales applied to that individual contract. The rule also assumes goods offered in distinct lots; it does not address a single indivisible thing sold whole. And the retraction and withdrawal rights it describes end the instant the hammer falls on the lot in question.