Caravans parked in community car park

Hi,

I live in a community in Torremolinos and a tenant who has recently moved into an apartment has brought with him a caravan.  He has parked it in one of only 10 parking spaces that should be shared between 19 owners.  Our President has written to him and asked him to remove the caravan but he has not done so.  At our AGM the topic was discussed and it was minuted that the caravan should be removed.   The owner of the apartment was at the AGM and she was asked to tell her tenant to remove the caravan.   We are unsure what actual steps we can take to have the caravan removed.  Not only is it taking up one of our few parking spaces but also the towbar sticks out into the entranceway and could be considered dangerous.   Anyone have any ideas on what we can do next?  

Many thanks

helen177

Your administrator should be advising you on this. I'm not sure of the legal position - my immediate thoughts are however that unless there is a unanimous resolution passed and included in the statutes determining how long a vehicle can be parked in one place, I would have thought the tennant has as much right as any other resident to use one of the parking spaces.

If it is obstructing an entranceway, on the other hand, I would have thought the community has every right to insist it is moved to another place. Since you have already made written requests to the tennant and the property owner, your next step should probably be to make a formal denuncia against the property owner. Again, the administrator should assist in this matter. If this still fails, you would probably be within your rights to call the police and have them tow it away. But as I said before, I'm not certain about this, so check with your administrator on how to proceed.

 What is the description of what can be parked in a CAR parking space in comunity documents . Otherwise you could have a row of trailers full of  anything parked there. Is it not for cars??

 yes have to agree with the problem of unacceptable parking on community land, we have an absent owner (who has rented his property) and has left his old english mondeo in the car park for so far 4years without it moving, tyres now flat, silver paintwork peeling, but it appears there is nothing to be done about it as it is on private land, Also it would appear that an owner conveys all owners rights (apart from voting) on his tennent and also keeps them himself,  Ron 

I have some cottages and we are always getting people "dump" cars on my car park. If they are newish vehicles they usually go within days as the owner may have been ill or had too much to drink so i wait a week and then just remove the thing to a nearby supermarket car park with a friends low loader!!! It's annoying and time consuming and obviously I pay my friend each time too but it has to be done.  The previous owner used to have so much trouble, trying to locate owners, dealing with the police who were simply annoyed to be bothered and there were about 6 scrap cars when i bought the properties and it had been noted by guets on Trip Advisor etc. which can destroy a tourist business.  In your case of course you know the owner but also in your case this is so easy as it's a caravan. Almost certainly your contracts will state the car park is to be used only for road legal vehicles but it is the rest of the wording that is so simple to check. it may state NO CARAVANS or may use an expression like, "Road Taxed" which would therefore exclude a caravan. But to save all this wasted time this is sat there, as you said with a tow bar sticking out, begging to be towed away by anyone with a tow bar. ( If I walked into that tow bar one night I would be suing the owner within 24 hours for personal injury by the way). If a person, "unknown by yourself" towed it onto a public road and dumped it then the police would be along in a snap and confiscate it. Meanwhile you could park a real vehicle in the vacated spot. Caravans are not registered so the owner may not be contacted by the police but my friend legitimately had his caravan confiscated by the Spanish Police and was told it had been parked for too long in one place with UK plates on!!! It caused him so much trouble and I’m sure he ended up paying tax or a fine; I was surprised as the police don’t normally do very much. 

I think direct action is the only way to sort this. And morally, unless your unknown friend actually intended to keep the caravan it's not theft, simply logistical re-location. One note: I have heard of motor homes referred to as caravans. That would be a different kettle of fish and almost certainly your bye-laws would allow a "camper - van" to be parked there as they are effectively road registered cars.  Good luck with it as once again this is one selfish moron spoiling things for everyone else.

I had this problem in England and my business suffered as clients

were unable to park.

After trying the legal options which did not work, our solution was to pull the offending vehicles

into the highway in the early hours and let plod sort it. - It was suggested by one of our guys that

a vehicle fire would be  possible, but this suggestion was NOT followed ! After several tow aways the

message got home.

What is the law in Spain about caravans or motor homes parked overnight by the side of the road with or without the owners (land) permission.

Many thanks for the various thoughts and advice about the caravan.

We have asked our administrator about this problem but have not received any specific advice - some shoulder shrugging and comments about it being very difficult to do anything.   However we shall go back to him with some of the suggestions put forward and see if we can get any further.   If we have succes I shall post full details of the process we went through.

Helen177

The latest information for those interested in the caravan situation is that our community is holding an Extraordinary Meeting  with the removal of the caravan as an item on the Agenda.   Our lawyer says that although we asked for the removal of the caravan in our AGM this was under any other business and to give any action we may have to take full force the issue should be raised as an Agenda  item.   Since my last post a car hit the tow bar of the caravan knocking the caravan sideways into the next parking bay.   Fortunately no car was parked there or there would definately have been some damage caused.    The sooner we can take steps to remove the caravan the better - what steps those might be we will hopefully know after the coming meeting.    Will keep you posted.

helen177