Homeowners association (comunidad de propietarios): fees, levies and how to fight decisions

01What the community is — and what you actually owe

Every building divided into flats in Spain runs under the Horizontal Property Act — the LPH (Ley de Propiedad Horizontal, Ley 49/1960). Your flat comes with an ownership share (cuota de participación) written into the title deed, and that percentage is the key that unlocks everything else: your voting weight at meetings and your slice of every bill.

The recurring bill is the general expenses (gastos generales) — cleaning, lift, electricity for common areas, the building’s insurance, the administrator’s fee. Under art. 9.1.e LPH you owe them in proportion to your cuota, whether or not you use the lift, the pool or the flat itself. “I don’t live there” is not a defence Spanish law recognises.

On top of the regular fee sit special levies (derramas): one-off extraordinary contributions the meeting approves for big works — a new roof, a façade renovation, a lift retrofit. A derrama follows the same cuota rule, with one detail that matters enormously when a flat changes hands mid-plan: each instalment is owed by whoever is the owner on the day that instalment falls due. Buy a flat in month three of a ten-instalment façade plan, and instalments four to ten are yours — which is why the community debt certificate (see below) belongs on every buyer’s checklist.

02The non-resident trap: notices served on your empty flat

This is the single most expensive paragraph of the LPH for foreign owners, and almost nobody reads it before it bites. Under art. 9.1.h you must notify the community of a service address in Spain for anything the community needs to send you — meeting summonses, minutes, fee claims.

If you never gave one, the law’s fallback is brutal in its simplicity: the flat you own in the building is your address. Notices delivered to your empty apartment — or handed to whoever occupies it — count as validly served on you.

The consequences cascade. The meeting you never heard about takes place without you. The minutes you never received start the clock to challenge its decisions (for absent owners, the challenge deadline runs from notification — and a notice to the flat is notification). A fee claim you never saw ripens into a court order. By the time the problem reaches you in London or Berlin, the deadlines that could have protected you have quietly expired in Spain. The fix costs one letter: notify the administrator, in writing and with proof, of an address — or an email plus a representative — where you can actually be reached.

03The owners meeting (junta): which majorities decide what

The community’s decisions are taken at the owners meeting (junta de propietarios), usually once a year plus extraordinary sessions. Ordinary matters — approving the budget and accounts, appointing the president and administrator, routine maintenance — pass on ordinary majorities of those present. The decisions are recorded in the minutes (acta), which is the document that legally exists; what was “said at the meeting” does not.

Two special regimes are worth knowing before you ever raise your hand — or fail to.

• Accessibility works the junta cannot block. Under art. 10.1.b LPH, works reasonably required for accessibility — requested for owners or users with a disability, or over 70 — are mandatory, no vote needed to impose them, when their repercussed annual cost, net of public aid, does not exceed 12 monthly ordinary fees. They are also mandatory whenever public aid covers at least 75% of the cost. A junta “no” to a qualifying ramp or stairlift is a decision contrary to the law — and challengeable as such.
• The tourist-rental vote. Since LO 1/2025 (in force 3 April 2025), art. 17.12 LPH puts short-term tourist letting squarely in the junta’s hands: the resolution that approves, limits, conditions or prohibits tourist rental requires a double majority of 3/5 of the owners and 3/5 of the ownership shares. The practical consequence cuts both ways — a new tourist let now needs the community’s express prior approval, and the same 3/5 majority can impose special fees or increase a tourist flat’s share of common costs by up to 20%. If your investment plan says “Airbnb”, read the minutes book before you read the listing.

One more habit that pays for itself: whatever the topic, make sure your vote — for or against — is recorded in the acta by name. As the next section shows, whether you voted against or were absent is what gives you the right to fight the decision later.

04Fighting a junta decision: three months, not “someday”

Junta resolutions are not suggestions — once the challenge window closes, they bind you even if they are unfair, expensive or aimed rather precisely at the foreigner on the fourth floor. The window is set by art. 18 LPH and it is short: three months from the adoption of the resolution to challenge it in court. Only when the resolution is contrary to the law or to the community’s own statutes does the window stretch to one year.

For owners who were absent from the meeting, the clock runs from notification of the resolution — which is exactly why the service-address rule above is not bureaucratic trivia. If the minutes were validly delivered to your empty Spanish flat in January, your three months may be gone before you ever learn a derrama was approved.

Standing has its own rules. You can challenge if you voted against the resolution (or your dissent is otherwise on record), if you were absent, or if you were unlawfully deprived of your vote. Vote in favour and you have, in general, waived the fight. And there is an entry fee: to be heard, you must be up to date (al corriente) with your community payments — or deposit the disputed amounts with the court (consignación). The exception, in art. 18.2, is when what you are challenging is precisely the resolution establishing or changing the fees: you cannot be forced to pay a charge as a precondition for disputing that very charge.

In practice the sequence is: obtain the acta, check the deadline arithmetic against your notification date, put your objection on paper to the administrator (it rarely resolves the matter, but it builds the record), and file the court challenge before the window closes. The three-month term is one of forfeiture — no letter, complaint or negotiation pauses it.

05If you don’t pay: the debt follows the flat

The LPH gives the community an unusually sharp set of collection tools, and foreign owners are their favourite target — not out of malice, but because a debtor abroad with an unwatched flat is the easiest file on the administrator’s desk.

First, the debt sticks to the property, not just to you. Unpaid community fees for the current year and the three previous years are preferential credits, and the flat itself answers for them when it changes hands (the so-called afección real). A buyer can inherit that backlog — which is why, on any sale, the seller must present a community debt certificate issued within the previous seven days, unless the buyer expressly waives it. If you are the buyer: never waive it. If you are the seller: order it early, because nothing stalls a notary appointment like a missing certificate.

Second, collection is fast-tracked. Art. 21 LPH channels community debt through the special payment-order procedure (proceso monitorio): the community certifies the debt, notifies the debtor before suing — personally or, failing that, on the community notice board for at least three days — and files. Fees that keep accruing up to the notification can be rolled into the claim. And the community may sue the registered owner (titular registral): if you sold years ago but never made it to the land registry, or bought and never registered, the claim can still land on the name the registry shows.

A monitorio served on a non-resident who gave no Spanish address is the perfect storm: served at the flat, undefended by silence, and enforced against the property. Everything in this article funnels into one line of advice — make sure Spanish paperwork can physically reach you.

06The foreign owner’s playbook

None of the above requires living in Spain — it requires being reachable in Spain and reacting inside Spanish deadlines. The working routine:

• Give a service address — in writing, now. Notify the administrator of an address (and email) where you can be reached, under art. 9.1.h. Keep proof of the notification. This one letter defuses the worst scenario in this article.
• Read every acta, even the boring ones. The minutes are where derramas, fee changes and tourist-rental votes are born. Deadlines to react run from them — three months goes fast across a summer.
• Appoint a proxy for the junta. You can be represented at meetings by proxy (a simple signed authorisation is standard practice). A neighbour, your property manager or your lawyer votes as instructed — and your “against” gets on the record, preserving your right to challenge.
• Buying? Demand the debt certificate. The seven-day community debt certificate is your only clean picture of what the flat owes and which derrama instalments are pending. Do not waive it to “speed things up”.
• A certified letter (burofax) is never decoration. If one arrives from the community, deadlines are probably already running — answer it, in writing, with proof of delivery. If you need to put the community on notice, use the same tool.
• Escalate on the calendar, not on emotion. Objection noted in the acta → written challenge to the administrator → court claim inside the art. 18 window. Skip a step if the deadline forces you to; never skip the deadline.