If you own an apartment or a property in an urbanisation in Spain, you are automatically part of a community of owners — with voting rights, fee obligations, and legal exposure you need to understand.
The comunidad de propietarios is a cornerstone of Spanish property law. If you own an apartment, a townhouse in a complex, a villa in a gated urbanisation, or any property sharing communal elements — pool, gardens, lift, access road, private security, storage — you are automatically a member of the community of owners. Membership is not optional; it is inherent in owning the property. So are the financial obligations, the voting rights, and the rules set collectively by the other owners.
The framework is set by the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal (LPH), Law 49/1960, as amended extensively since — most recently and significantly by Organic Law 1/2025 introducing the three-fifths community vote requirement for new tourist lets. Every community is governed by (a) the LPH itself, (b) its own foundational título constitutivo and estatutos (community statutes), and (c) the reglamento de régimen interior (house rules) where applicable.
For foreign owners, the community can feel opaque. Meetings are held in Spanish. Notices arrive by post to your Spanish address even when you are abroad. Votes can pass by simple majority for many issues but require larger majorities for others. Non-payers face fast-track debt recovery that can ultimately lead to a property embargo. Knowing how the system works protects your investment and gives you leverage over decisions — whether over a proposed special levy, a neighbour’s unauthorised terrace, or the community’s response to a tourist-let request.
Platinum Legal Spain represents individual owners and small landlord groups in community matters: attending AGMs on your behalf, challenging resolutions, recovering community debt, defending owners against irregular assessments, and advising on the 2025 tourist-let consent regime. This page sets out how the system works and where the levers are.
Four key roles, one governing law, and a voting system that changes depending on what is being decided.
The AGM (junta ordinaria) and any extraordinary meeting (junta extraordinaria). The sovereign decision-making body. At least one AGM per year is legally required.
Elected (or rotated) from among owners. Legal representative of the community. Signs documents, signs off accounts, and is the default person sued or suing on behalf of the community.
Often a professional firm. Handles the day-to-day management, keeps accounts, collects fees, issues minutes, and acts as secretary to the community. Not legally required — some small communities self-manage — but almost universal in larger ones.
Often the same person as the administrator. Keeps the minutes book, drafts resolutions, issues certificates, and handles the formal records. Legally distinct role even when held with the administrator.
Elected support to the president. Steps in when the president is unavailable. Essential in communities with significant foreign-owned property where the president is often abroad.
Each with a cuota de participación (participation quota, usually a percentage based on surface area). Voting power, fee share and liability all follow the quota.
The community’s own rulebook, registered with the property deeds. Binding on all current and future owners. Restrictions on tourist lets, short-term use, pets or commercial activity typically live here.
Secondary rules for day-to-day living — pool hours, noise, communal spaces. Passed by simple majority. Binding but easier to change than statutes.
The LPH sets different majorities for different decisions. Getting the majority right matters: a resolution passed with the wrong majority is challengeable and annulable.
Simple majority (of those attending in person or by proxy at the meeting) — most day-to-day decisions: approving the annual accounts, appointing the president, approving ordinary expenses.
One-third — specific legal rights such as installing charging points for electric vehicles in a private parking space, subject to notice to the community.
Three-fifths majority (of owners AND of participation quotas) — the big one. Required for material changes: authorising new tourist lets (since April 2025), installing lifts in existing buildings, modifying communal services, limiting or conditioning commercial activity, and similar structural decisions.
Unanimity — required for modifying the foundational title or statutes in a way that affects ownership quotas, creating new communal elements, or other decisions that fundamentally alter the ownership structure.
Where a three-fifths resolution is passed at a properly convened meeting, absent owners have 30 days from notification of the minutes to object. If they do not, their silence is treated as consent — "silencio positivo". This means a foreign owner who does not read the post or fails to act within 30 days can be bound by a resolution they would otherwise have voted against. Our standard AGM service includes reviewing minutes within the 30-day window and lodging objections where warranted.
Foreign owners often leave rights on the table because they are not aware of them. These are the ones we use most often.
You have a vote at every AGM proportional to your participation quota. You can attend in person, by proxy (any individual carrying a written power), or via video where the statutes permit.
Resolutions passed with the wrong majority, without proper notice, or in breach of the LPH or statutes can be annulled by court action within 3 months (1 year in some cases) of notification.
Every owner has the right to inspect accounts, contracts, minutes and community records. Administrators routinely resist; the law is clear the right exists.
Owners representing 25% of quotas (or 25% of owners) can requisition an extraordinary meeting. Useful where the president or administrator is obstructive.
Neighbours building terraces, enclosures, or installations that affect communal elements can be sued for restitution. The community must act — and owners can force the community to act.
You have a legal right to use pools, gardens, access roads and other communal elements. Restrictions must be reasonable, applied uniformly, and consistent with the statutes.
The most common community-related disputes we handle for foreign owners.
Neighbours enclosing balconies, extending terraces, installing aircon units on facades without permission. Restitution claims are the normal remedy — often successful but slow.
Sudden or excessive community fee hikes. Sometimes justified (roof replacement); sometimes not (administrator inflating budgets). Challenges focus on procedural defect or abuse of majority rights.
Post-2025, communities rejecting tourist-let consent. Pre-2025 licences grandfathered; new applications need the three-fifths vote. Structured challenges possible where statutes or vote procedures are defective.
Enforcement of house rules — noise, parties, pets. Typically mediation first, escalating to court injunction in persistent cases.
Restrictions on guests, rentals, commercial activity, or specific communal spaces. Must be reasonable and properly adopted. Over-reaching restrictions are challengeable.
Leaks from one apartment into another, common-element defects affecting individual apartments, or communal-element maintenance failures. Responsibility allocation is a frequent fight.
Chronic non-payers pushing the community into cash-flow trouble. We act for communities recovering via monitorio and for owners whose fee share is inflated by others’ default.
Rare but important. Cuotas set in the foundational title can be challenged where they are manifestly unfair or where physical reality has diverged materially from the original deed.
Administrators overcharging, under-performing or acting beyond their remit. Replacement requires a simple-majority vote and proper notice.
Being a non-resident owner does not reduce your rights, but it requires a different operational approach.
We attend every AGM on your behalf, carrying your written proxy and voting instructions, reporting back in English with the minutes and any resolutions requiring your follow-up.
We review every minutes document within the 30-day silencio positivo window and lodge objections where any resolution is defective or adverse to your interests.
We set up the Spanish bank direct debit for your community fees, monitor for unexpected debits, and flag any extraordinary levy for your authorisation before payment.
Community correspondence posted to your Spanish property is forwarded, scanned, translated and summarised — nothing slips through while you are abroad.
Where a resolution affects your interests adversely — a disproportionate levy, a restriction on your use, an unauthorised works authorisation — we challenge through the LPH procedures.
We brief you in English before any meeting where a three-fifths or unanimity vote is on the agenda, so you know what you are voting on and how it affects your position.
Yes, if the property shares communal elements with other properties — apartment block, gated urbanisation, townhouse complex with shared pool or gardens, and so on. Membership is not optional; it is inherent in ownership. A fully detached property with no shared elements may not be part of a community, though many rural urbanisations still have communities covering the access road and common services.
Each property has a cuota de participación (participation quota) set out in the community’s foundational deed (título constitutivo). Usually expressed as a percentage based on surface area relative to the total community. The annual budget, approved at the AGM, is divided among all owners in proportion to their quotas. If the annual budget is €100,000 and your quota is 4%, your annual fee is €4,000.
No. Fee increases must be approved at a properly convened AGM with the correct majority (usually simple majority for ordinary fees). Increases that are disproportionate, procedurally defective, or designed to target specific owners can be challenged in court within 3 months of notification. Routine inflation-linked increases are normal and hard to challenge.
The community can trigger a procedimiento monitorio — a fast-track court procedure for undisputed debt. Demand letter, 20-day response window for the debtor, judgment if no valid defence, then embargo on bank accounts or the property itself. Non-payers also typically pay the community’s legal costs and interest on top of the principal. Persistent non-payment can ultimately lead to property auction, though this is rare — the pressure of the registry embargo usually forces settlement first.
Organic Law 1/2025, effective 3 April 2025, requires a three-fifths majority vote of owners AND of participation quotas to authorise a new tourist let in a community of owners. Existing licences from before 3 April 2025 are grandfathered. New applications require the community meeting, the resolution on the agenda with proper notice, and the vote. This is now a fundamental due-diligence question for anyone buying an apartment with the intention of letting to tourists.
Yes. You can vote in person, by proxy (any individual carrying your signed proxy form), or by video/electronic means where the statutes permit. Most of our non-resident clients use our proxy service — we attend with written instructions, vote accordingly, and report back with minutes and translation.
Where a three-fifths resolution is passed at a properly convened meeting, absent owners have 30 days from notification of the minutes to object. If they do not object, their silence is treated as consent. The effect is that a resolution can bind an absent owner who would have voted against had they been present. This is why reviewing minutes within 30 days is critical — a point often missed by foreign owners relying on postal notice to a Spanish address while they are abroad.
Under LPH Article 18, a resolution can be challenged in court where: it breaches the law or statutes; it seriously prejudices the community; it causes grave prejudice to an owner with no obligation to bear it; or it was adopted by abuse of majority rights. Time limit is 3 months from notification (1 year for resolutions contrary to law or statutes). Non-paying owners lose the right to challenge unless they pay or deposit the disputed fees.
Yes — in part. Under LPH Article 9.1(e), a new buyer is liable for community debts of the year of purchase and the three preceding years. Older debt stays with the previous owner. This is why a community debt certificate is mandatory as part of conveyancing — we obtain and verify it on every purchase. If the seller cannot clear the debt, the price is usually reduced by that amount and the buyer clears directly at completion.
Only with your consent, or by court order, or in genuine emergency (fire, water leak, gas). The community has a right of access to communal elements on your property (e.g. pipes) for repair, but the manner and notice must be reasonable. Forced entry without consent or court order is challengeable as an unlawful invasion.
Generally yes, if the element is part of the communal ownership. An owner with a ground-floor apartment still pays for the lift; an owner without a pet still pays for the pool. Exceptions exist where statutes expressly exempt certain properties from certain charges (e.g. commercial ground-floor units exempt from the lift), but those exemptions must be in the title deed or properly adopted statutes.
The president is elected at the AGM from among the owners. The LPH allows rotation among owners based on a mandatory alphabetical or quota order if nobody volunteers. The presidency carries legal liability — the president is the community’s legal representative — so many foreign-majority communities either appoint a professional president (where statutes permit) or rotate with an administrator doing most of the real work.
The president is an elected owner and the legal representative of the community. The administrator is typically a paid professional (often a firm) handling day-to-day management — accounts, fee collection, correspondence, contractor coordination, AGM logistics. The administrator reports to the president and the AGM. Small communities sometimes self-manage without a professional administrator.
Yes, but the first step is usually a complaint to the community, which then acts formally. Where the community does not act (common with unauthorised works that benefit a friendly board), the individual owner can sue directly under LPH Article 7. Injunction to remove the works, damages for loss of enjoyment, and in extreme cases a court order restricting use of the offending property can follow.
Simple majority at a properly convened AGM. The new administrator must be appointed and the old one formally dismissed. Documentation, accounts, archives and contracts must be transferred. In practice the transition can be contentious — outgoing administrators occasionally delay handover or withhold records. We handle transitions, including recovery of records through court order where necessary.
AGM representation, minutes review, dispute work and debt recovery. Book a consultation and we will scope the right retainer for your building.
The information on this page is general guidance only and does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Spanish property, lending, licensing and community regulations vary by region and individual circumstances. Always obtain advice from a qualified professional before acting. Platinum Legal Spain is an independent English-speaking legal and immigration practice serving international clients across Spain.