The Spanish congress has recently passed a law encouraging the leasing of properties on the part of owners by making the eviction process much easier. Amongst other things, the new law speeds up the judicial process the owner is faced with when seeking an eviction or payment of rent due.

The new process foresees the possibility of a direct execution of an eviction order in a period of time not longer than 15 days and without any other formalities in the case of tenants who do not voluntarily leave the property in the stipulated time.

The most important points of this new law are:

1. Reduction of the applicable time periods.

The time period for filing an eviction application has been reduced from 2 months to 1 month from the point where the landlord formally requests payment of outstanding rent. This eviction application can be avoided however if the tenant makes good any outstanding amounts in this time.

2. Rapid execution of the eviction order

A court sentence is now sufficient for the execution of the eviction on the day and at the time stipulated in the sentence.

3. Verbal Court Case

The new law also means that all actions, both the eviction itself as well the claiming of outstanding rent can now be carried out verbally (i.e. without the need for additional documentation). This will allow for the passing of a court sentence in as little as 5 days.

The law always provides that in certain cases the landlord will under certain circumstances no longer be necessarily bound to a minimum contract of 5 years. The cases in which he or she can rescind the contract now include if he or she needs the property for his or her own personal use extended also to the use of the property by his or her parents, children or spouse (in the case of divorce for example).

These limitations must be expressly indicated in the rental contract however. If however on application of this clause for personal use, the property has not been reoccupied for the stated purpose, the landlord is obliged to return the use of the property to the previous tenant and to indemnify him or her for expenses occurred in seeking alternative accommodation.

Once again, such conditions should be expressly stated in the rental contract itself, not least to ensure their rapid execution in the case of non fulfillment.