If you've received a desahucio (eviction) notice, do not wait. Spanish eviction proceedings move quickly once filed, and missing a deadline can lose you the case by default. We defend tenants, check whether your tenancy is protected, and protect your right to remain.
If you've been served, time is critical. Once an eviction claim is admitted by the court, you usually have a short, fixed window — often around ten days — to respond. If you do nothing, the court can rule against you automatically. Contact us the day you are notified, not the week after.
A desahucio is the formal, court-based process a landlord must use to recover a property from a tenant in Spain. The crucial point — and the one that catches foreign tenants out — is that a landlord cannot evict you themselves. They cannot change the locks, remove your belongings, cut off the water or electricity, or simply order you out. Doing any of that is unlawful. To remove you legally, the landlord has to go to court, and the court has to issue an order. That process gives you a defined opportunity to respond, and often grounds to challenge, delay, or resolve the matter.
The two most common types are eviction for non-payment of rent (desahucio por falta de pago) and eviction at the end of a term the landlord says has expired (desahucio por expiración del plazo). They are defended very differently. A non-payment claim turns on whether the arrears are correct and whether they can be cleared; an end-of-term claim turns on whether your tenancy is in fact still protected under the LAU — which, for a primary residence, it very often is. Many evictions that look final on paper can be challenged or delayed once a lawyer examines the contract and the paperwork.
Quick, calm steps that protect your position before anything is decided.
The single worst response is silence. Read the documents, note any deadline, and keep the envelope and date of receipt — they matter.
You generally do not have to leave just because a notice arrives. Leaving prematurely can forfeit rights and money. Take advice first.
Find the contract, proof of rent payments, the deposit details, and any messages with the landlord. These decide your defence.
Paying disputed sums, or signing anything, can undermine your position. Let us check what is actually owed first.
Court deadlines in eviction cases are short and strict. Tell us the dates on the documents the moment you contact us.
The earlier we're involved, the more options you have — from clearing arrears to challenging a flawed claim.
It is worth being blunt about this, because the cost of inaction is high. If an eviction claim is admitted and you do not respond within the window the court allows, the case can be decided against you without your side ever being heard. A date is then set for the property to be handed over, and enforcement follows. At that stage your options shrink dramatically. Almost everything we can do to help — challenge the claim, clear arrears in time, negotiate an orderly exit, or simply buy you the weeks you need — depends on acting inside that first window. The tenants who lose badly are nearly always the ones who waited.
Foreign tenants often find the desahucio frightening precisely because they cannot see the shape of it. Knowing the sequence — and where each opportunity to act sits — turns a process that feels like a runaway train into something with handholds. The stages below are the normal path of a Spanish eviction claim. The exact wording, the speed, and the dates will vary by court and by region, and they routinely shift, but the structure is consistent. Where you have a lawyer engaged, each of these stages is a point at which your position can be improved.
Before a non-payment eviction reaches court, a responsible landlord will usually send a formal demand for the unpaid rent, very often by burofax — a recorded, legally certified communication that proves both what was sent and when. This step matters more than tenants realise. A clear, properly served prior demand can affect whether you keep the right to clear the arrears and stop the case (see enervación below). If you receive a burofax, do not file it and forget it. The clock that follows it is real, and how you respond — or whether a lawyer responds for you — can shape everything that comes after.
If the matter is not resolved, the landlord's lawyer files a claim — the demanda — at the court covering the property's location. This is the formal start of court proceedings. At this point you may not yet have been contacted: the claim exists, but it has not been served on you. There is nothing for you to do until it is admitted and notified, but if you already know a claim is coming, this is the ideal moment to get advice and prepare your documents, rather than scrambling once the clock is running.
The court reviews the claim and, if it is in order, formally admits it for processing — the admisión a trámite. You are then notified, usually by the court's process server delivering the documents to the property. This notification is the moment that starts your response window. Keep the documents and note the date of delivery precisely; that date is the anchor for every deadline that follows. The notification will typically also tell you the consequences of not responding and, in non-payment cases, set out the sum claimed.
Once you are notified, you have a short, fixed period — frequently around ten days — to respond. This is the single most important deadline in the whole process. Within it you can oppose the claim, dispute the figures, raise a defence on the term, or, in many non-payment cases, clear the arrears to stop the eviction. If you do nothing, the court can decide against you without ever hearing your side. This window is precisely why we urge tenants to make contact the day they are served. A lawyer responding inside it preserves every option; silence forfeits most of them.
If you oppose the claim, the court will normally set a hearing — the vista — where both sides put their case before the judge. Not every eviction reaches a hearing; some are resolved on the papers, and others settle beforehand. Where there is a vista, it is your opportunity to present evidence: the contract, proof of payments, correspondence, the true state of the arrears, or the protected status of your tenancy. Having representation here matters, both for the legal argument and because everything is conducted in Spanish.
After the hearing — or after the response window, if you did not oppose — the court issues its decision. It may dismiss the claim, reduce what is owed, or order the eviction to proceed. Even an unfavourable judgment is rarely the end of the conversation: there may be grounds to appeal, and there is usually still room to negotiate the practicalities of an exit. What you cannot recover is a missed deadline, which is why the earlier stages carry so much weight.
If eviction is ordered, the court sets a date for the lanzamiento — the physical handover of the property, carried out under court authority. This date is fixed by the court, not by the landlord, and it can be moved: it is common for lanzamiento dates to be postponed, sometimes more than once, depending on the court's calendar and the circumstances of the household. Even at this late stage, a lawyer can sometimes secure more time, arrange an orderly departure, or resolve outstanding issues such as the deposit. The point to hold onto is that no part of this happens overnight and no part of it happens without the court.
For tenants facing a non-payment eviction, the most powerful tool in Spanish law is often enervación. In plain terms, it allows you to halt the eviction by paying off the rent owed within the legal window. If the arrears are what triggered the claim, clearing them can take the ground out from under it. For many tenants whose problem was a temporary cash-flow crisis rather than an unwillingness to pay, this is the route that lets them stay in their home.
It is, however, hedged with conditions that must be understood properly before relying on it, which is why this is a section about taking advice rather than a how-to guide.
From the first notice to the final handover, here is the work we carry out on your behalf.
You forward the burofax or notice and we assess it at once — what is being demanded, whether it is correct, and what your options are before any claim is filed.
If a claim is admitted, we draft and file your formal opposition inside the response window — disputing the figures, raising the term, or flagging procedural defects.
Where there is a vista, we represent you before the judge, present your evidence, and conduct the whole hearing in Spanish on your behalf.
Where leaving is the sensible outcome, we negotiate time to find a new home, an orderly handover, and terms far better than an uncontested order would give.
We pursue the return of your fianza and any other sums wrongly withheld, separating what you genuinely owe from what you do not.
We quote a clear fee for the work involved so you know the cost before committing, and we keep you informed at every stage — no surprises.
No two eviction cases are identical, but most fall into a handful of recognisable patterns. Seeing your situation described here will not give you the answer — that depends on your contract and your facts — but it will show you that there is almost always an approach, and that the outcome is rarely as fixed as the notice makes it look.
A landlord can, in defined circumstances, recover a home for their own or a close family member's use — but only where the contract and the law actually allow it, and usually only after the right period and the right notice. We check whether the claimed need genuinely qualifies, whether proper notice was given, and whether the timing fits the LAU. Where the requirements are not met, the recovery can be challenged; where they are, we focus on securing you proper time to relocate.
Landlords sometimes label a genuine home as a "seasonal" or "temporary" let to sidestep the protections the LAU gives a primary residence. But the label is not what counts — the real use is. If you have been living in the property as your main home, a mislabelled seasonal contract may not give the landlord the easy exit they assumed, and the term itself becomes defensible. We examine how the property has actually been used and whether the contract reflects reality. A contract review often reveals this before it ever reaches a courtroom.
This is one of the most common — and most dangerous — situations we see. A tenant, frustrated by a landlord who will not fix a serious problem, stops paying rent in protest. The instinct is understandable, but withholding rent without following the correct legal route can convert a repairs dispute into a non-payment eviction you are now defending from the back foot. We assess whether the repairs issue can be raised properly, whether any set-off is justified, and how to put your position on a sound footing rather than an improvised one. If repairs are the underlying issue, raising them through the right channel — not by simply withholding — is what protects you.
Job loss, illness, a relationship breakdown, a sudden drop in income: arrears that arise from genuine hardship are treated as exactly that, a problem to be resolved, not a fraud to be punished. Here the focus is often on enervación — clearing the arrears within the legal window to stop the eviction — and, where the household is vulnerable, on ensuring the protections discussed above are properly raised. Even where full payment is not possible, a negotiated repayment arrangement or a managed exit with time is frequently achievable. The worst outcome by far is to let the deadline pass in despair; the situation is almost always more workable than it feels.
Once an eviction claim is admitted by the court you usually have a short, fixed window — often around ten days — to respond. Miss it and the court can rule against you by default. This is why you should contact a lawyer the day you are served, not later.
No. A landlord cannot lawfully change the locks, remove your belongings, cut off utilities, or force you out. To recover the property they must go through the courts and obtain an order. Any attempt to evict you informally is unlawful, and we can act to stop it.
In many non-payment cases, yes — clearing the arrears within the legal window (a process called enervación) can stop the eviction. There are conditions and it is not always available, so take advice quickly to confirm whether this route is open to you.
For a primary residence, the LAU often protects you for up to five years (seven if the landlord is a company), even if the written contract is shorter. An "end of term" eviction within that period may be wrong in law. We check the contract and the dates to see whether the claim stands.
Not before taking advice. Leaving prematurely can forfeit rights and money you would otherwise keep. A notice is the start of a process, not the end of it — and you usually have time and options. Let us assess your position first.
We assess your case and quote a clear fee for the work involved, so you understand the cost before committing. Given how quickly these cases move, the priority is getting a lawyer engaged inside the response window — we can confirm fees fast.
Yes. We act for English-speaking tenants throughout, explain everything in plain English, and handle all communication with the court and the landlord in Spanish on your behalf. Not understanding the documents is exactly when people miss deadlines, so getting bilingual help early matters.
Yes. Where eviction is ultimately likely, we can often secure more time, a managed and dignified exit, the return of your deposit, and a negotiated settlement on far better terms than an uncontested order would give you.
Typically: the landlord's prior demand (often by burofax), filing the claim (demanda), the court admitting it (admisión a trámite) and notifying you, your short response window, a possible hearing (vista), judgment, and finally a date for the physical eviction (lanzamiento). Court dates can shift, but your deadline to respond is fixed — which is why early action matters at every stage.
No. Clearing the arrears to stop a non-payment eviction is generally a one-time right, and it may not be available if the landlord properly demanded payment a set period before filing and you still did not pay, or if you have used it before. The amount and timing are strict. Take advice before paying anything, so we can confirm the route is open and calculate the figure correctly.
It can, in defined circumstances. Where there is genuine hardship or vulnerability — for example dependent children, elderly or disabled household members, or no alternative housing — courts may be required to notify social services and an eviction may be suspended for a period set by the rules in force. These protections are conditional, not automatic, and depend on your circumstances, so they should be raised correctly and early rather than relied on as a reason to do nothing.
Withholding rent without following the correct legal route can turn a repairs complaint into a non-payment eviction you must now defend. We assess whether the repairs issue can be raised properly, whether any set-off is justified, and how to put your position on a sound footing. If repairs are the real problem, the safer route is to raise them through the proper channel rather than simply stopping payment.
No. A landlord cannot lawfully change the locks, remove your belongings, or cut off utilities to force you out. Only a court can order an eviction, and only after the proper process. Keep evidence — photos, dates, messages, witnesses — and get advice immediately. There may be civil and even criminal routes to stop the conduct and restore your access.
Send us the documents today and we'll tell you immediately whether the claim can be challenged and what to do inside the response window.
The information on this page is general guidance only and does not constitute legal advice, and timeframes are indicative — eviction (desahucio) procedure and deadlines are set by court rules and the facts of each case, and vary by region and circumstances. If you have been served, obtain advice immediately. Spanish tenancy law (the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos) is subject to change. Platinum Legal Spain is an independent English-speaking legal practice acting for tenants across Spain.