NEARLY a third of all homes in Spain have no buildings insurance, and almost one in 10 motorbikes and cars are uninsured, recent figures by an online broker show.
The number of vehicles without insurance, even compulsory third party cover, has gone up 35 per cent since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, now reaching 2.4 million or 8.8 per cent of the total.
This is highly illegal, since all drivers must have insurance to cover the costs of repairs and compensation for injury to anyone affected by an accident they cause.
The Spanish government's Insurance Compensation Consortium, or Consorcio, covers damage or injury caused by uninsured drivers in the same way as the UK's Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB), but the driver in question can be heavily fined.
And even before the crisis, over 7.5 million properties in Spain did not have buildings insurance to cover them for structural damage or total loss in the event of storm, flood, escape of water, subsidence, impact, fire or caused by theft or attempted theft.
This has now gone up to 8.5 million, or more than three in 10 homes.
An even larger number have no contents insurance, meaning they cannot claim for any of their possessions such as furniture or domestic appliances if they suffer damage, loss or theft by fortuitous incidents.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com