El blog de Maria

Yes, it sounds strange or wrong but it is not.

Let me clarify:          

Spanish Law protects specially those renters of a home and try to provide permanence to them as a family; that is why these for-home-reasons rental contracts are benefitted with the right of yearly legal extension if decided by the tenant for a period of 5+3 years.

And how do I know my contract is a seasonal or a home contract?

EASY: It needs to be mentioned or infered in the text of the contract.

Under Spanish Law, what makes a contrat a seasonal or a permanent home contract is not the  time agreed  but the intention. There is a  widespread misconception about this as it is assumed that a  rental contract  with a time period under 12 months is a seasonal contract and therefore the tenant will not have legal rights to contract extensions up to a period of five + three years. IT IS WRONG.

You can sign a contract with a rental period of 11 or even  3 months and,  if you do not explicitly mention that is a SEASONAL contract,  once the time period expires, your tenant will inmediately have rights for the extension of the rental contract for a year more and, what is even worse... will have this right for  5 years + 3 years.

The only way to kick the persistent tenant out would be if  you or a descendant needs the house for living purposes, which will have to be proved by you.

On the other side, you can sign a contract for 2 years and being stated is a SEASONAL contract, once the 2 years period is over, the contract obligations are all over.

So..... do not just look to the numbers... look to the words ( SEASONAL vs HOME)

Spanish autumn harvest by Slow Spain at Flickr.com