The minutes of the owners' meeting: what they must say, when you get them and how an error is fixed

Three weeks after the annual meeting an envelope arrives, or a PDF: four pages headed «Acta de la Junta General Ordinaria». For an owner who was at home in Lyon while the meeting sat in a hotel lounge in Caleta de Fuste, those pages are the meeting. What they say was agreed is what was agreed, the day they arrive starts two clocks, and a mistake in them stays a mistake unless someone asks for it to be fixed in time. The Horizontal Property Act gives the minutes a single article, the nineteenth, and that article is more precise than most owners expect: it says what the minutes must contain, who signs them and by when, how they reach the owners and how an error is cured. This piece reads it as it stands in October 2026, together with the two articles that make the minutes matter to an absent owner and the one change that is still only a bill.

A page in a book that the Land Registrar stamps

The Act does not ask for a report of the meeting. It asks for a book: Los acuerdos de la Junta de propietarios se reflejarán en un libro de actas diligenciado por el Registrador de la Propiedad, the resolutions of the owners' meeting are recorded in a minute book legalised by the Land Registrar (article 19.1). The rules of that stamp are in article 415 of the Mortgage Regulation. The book has to be legalised necesariamente antes de su utilización, necessarily before it is used, by the registrar of the district where the building stands. It may be bound or de hojas móviles, loose-leaf, with every sheet numbered. A new book is stamped only when the community shows that the previous one is full, or declares it lost. The registrar has five days from the request to stamp it, fifteen with good reason, and notes each book on the building's own page in the register.

What that means for an owner is simple. The minutes you receive are a copy of a page in that book, and the book, not the e-mail, is the record.

What the minutes must say

Article 19.2 lists six things that every set of minutes must state, as a minimum. Each of them is something an owner who was not in the room can check.

Two more entries come from other articles. Owners who were in arrears when the meeting started may speak but not vote, and El acta de la Junta reflejará los propietarios privados del derecho de voto, the minutes record the owners deprived of their right to vote, whose quotas are left out of the count (article 15.2). How far the names of debtors may travel beyond the convocation and the minutes is in our piece on data protection in a community.

And the record of a vote against is worth more than it looks. Only three groups of owners can take a resolution to court: the absent, those unduly deprived of their vote, and those who hubiesen salvado su voto en la Junta, saved their vote at the meeting (article 18.2). An owner whose proxy voted against needs the minutes to say so.

Who writes them, who signs them, and by when

The minutes are the secretary's work. Where a professional administrator is appointed that is usually the administrator, because the Act lets one person hold both posts (article 13.6) and lists among the administrator's tasks Actuar, en su caso, como secretario de la Junta y custodiar a disposición de los titulares la documentación de la comunidad, to act, where applicable, as secretary of the meeting and to keep the community's documents at the owners' disposal (article 20.1.e). Where nobody is appointed, the president does both jobs (article 13.5).

The deadline is short: El acta deberá cerrarse con las firmas del presidente y del secretario al terminar la reunión o dentro de los diez días naturales siguientes, the minutes must be closed with the signatures of the president and the secretary when the meeting ends or within the following ten calendar days (article 19.3). Two things follow from that sentence and the next one. Desde su cierre los acuerdos serán ejecutivos, salvo que la Ley previere lo contrario, from their closing the resolutions are enforceable, unless the Act provides otherwise: the community can act on what was voted from those signatures, not from the day each owner reads it. And the Act asks for no vote to approve the minutes. The old habit of opening every meeting by «reading and approving the previous minutes» is a courtesy, not a requirement. The minutes are complete when two people have signed them.

When you get them

The Act says how the minutes travel and not when. El acta de las reuniones se remitirá a los propietarios de acuerdo con el procedimiento establecido en el artículo 9, the minutes of the meetings are sent to the owners by the procedure laid down in article 9 (article 19.3), and that procedure is the one for every notice of the community: to the address in Spain that the owner has given to the secretary and, if none was given, to the flat itself. If delivery there proves impossible, the notice is posted on the community's board with a dated note signed by the secretary and approved by the president, and it takes full effect en el plazo de tres días naturales, within three calendar days (article 9.1.h). No article sets a number of days for the sending. What the Act does instead is hang two deadlines on the moment the minutes arrive.

For an owner abroad the consequence is practical. A foreign address is not the address the Act means, so the minutes can be validly notified at a flat that stands empty in February, or on the community's board. The e-mail many communities also send is a convenience; the delivery the Act counts is the one to the address in Spain. How to choose that address, and how to vote from abroad, is in our guide to the annual meeting for owners abroad.

The two clocks that start with the minutes

For an owner who was at the meeting, the day that counts is the day of the meeting. For an owner who was not, it is the day the minutes arrive, and two things run from it.

The first is silence. On most matters, the votes of absent owners who were properly summoned and then informed of the resolution are counted as votes in favour if they do not tell the secretary that they disagree en el plazo de 30 días naturales, within 30 calendar days, by a means that leaves a record of receipt (article 17.8). The rule does not reach the resolutions whose cost cannot be passed on to owners who did not vote for them, nor alterations made for one owner's private use.

The second is the challenge. An absent owner may take a resolution to court, and the time to do so se computará a partir de la comunicación del acuerdo, is counted from the communication of the resolution (article 18.3): three months as a rule, one year when the resolution is contrary to the Act or to the statutes. For those who attended, the same periods run from the day of the meeting. Whoever challenges must be up to date with the community or deposit what is owed with the court (article 18.2).

The dates are the Act's words put on a calendar, for a resolution that is not contrary to the Act or the statutes. Nobody should plan to act on the last of them.

How an error is fixed

The Act expects mistakes and gives them a short path. Serán subsanables los defectos o errores del acta, the defects or errors of the minutes can be cured, provided that the minutes state without ambiguity the date and place of the meeting, the owners present or represented and the resolutions adopted, with the votes for and against and the quotas they represent, and that the president and the secretary have signed them. The cure has a deadline of its own: Dicha subsanación deberá efectuarse antes de la siguiente reunión de la Junta de propietarios, que deberá ratificar la subsanación, the correction must be made before the next meeting of the owners, which must ratify it (article 19.3). In practice that is three steps.

• Write to the secretary. Say which line is wrong and what it should say: a quota, a name among those represented, a vote recorded in favour that was against, a figure in the budget. Use a means that leaves a record, and do it soon: nothing in the Act stops the thirty days or the challenge period while a correction is discussed.
• Ask for the corrected page. The president and the secretary make the correction; ask for a copy of the page as it now stands in the book.
• Look for it on the next agenda. The following meeting has to ratify the correction, so it should appear as an item of its own.

What cannot be cured that way is a set of minutes that does not state the essentials or is not signed, and an error that the president and the secretary do not accept as one. There the remedy is the challenge of article 18, within its three months or its year.

What the minutes are used for afterwards

The minutes go on working long after the meeting. To claim unpaid fees through the fast payment-order procedure, the community must attach un certificado del acuerdo de liquidación de la deuda, a certificate of the resolution that settles the debt, issued by the secretary with the president's approval (article 21.3), and that resolution exists because the minutes record it; how the claim works is in our piece on unpaid community fees. The Act sets no time limit for keeping the book: El secretario custodiará los libros de actas de la Junta de propietarios, the secretary keeps the minute books of the owners' meeting, and must also keep for five years the convocations, communications, proxies and other relevant documents of the meetings (article 19.4). And because the documents are held at the owners' disposal, an owner can ask to see the book and the papers of a meeting, not only the copy that was sent.

The digital book that is not yet law

Everything above is paper, or at least a book with a registrar's stamp. A bill before the Congress would change one sentence of the Act. It adds to article 19.1 that El libro de actas podrá llevarse en formato y soporte electrónico conforme al modelo aprobado por resolución de la Dirección General de Seguridad Jurídica y Fe Pública, the minute book may be kept in electronic format and medium, following the model approved by a resolution of the directorate that oversees the registries. The Congress agreed to take the bill into consideration in May 2026, and at the start of October 2026 it was still in the Justice Committee with its period for amendments open. Until it is published in the Official State Gazette, the stamped book is the only one the Act knows. The rest of that bill, and its history, is in our piece on video meetings.

A reading list for the owner who was not there

• The day they arrived. Note the date the minutes reached your address in Spain: both clocks run from it.
• Your own line. Present, represented or absent, with the right name and the right quota.
• Your vote. If your proxy voted against, the minutes should say so by name.
• The money. The budget, the fees and any levy: amounts, dates and who pays.
• The debtors. Whether you appear as owing, and whether that is true.
• The signatures. President and secretary, and a closing date within ten days of the meeting.

What we do in the communities we administer

In the buildings we manage in Corralejo, Caleta de Fuste and the south, the minutes are closed with both signatures within the ten days the Act gives and sent to each owner's address for notices by the procedure of article 9. They are also in our owner portal, where the convocation, its proxy form and every other document of the community are kept under one login, so an owner abroad can read them without waiting for someone to empty the letterbox. A request to correct them is taken to the next meeting for ratification, as the Act requires. Owners who want their community run that way can read what we do for owners who live abroad and ask for a quote.

Common questions

Do the minutes have to be approved at the next meeting?

No. The Act closes them with the signatures of the president and the secretary, at the end of the meeting or within the following ten calendar days, and the resolutions are enforceable from that closing. The next meeting votes on the minutes only when a correction has been made and has to be ratified.

How long does the community have to send me the minutes?

The Act sets no number of days. It says that they are sent by the same procedure as every notice, to your address in Spain or, failing that, to the flat. What it does fix is what runs from their arrival if you were absent: thirty calendar days to tell the secretary that you disagree, and the period to challenge a resolution in court.

I was not at the meeting and I disagree with a resolution. What do I do?

Write to the secretary within thirty calendar days of receiving the minutes, by a means that leaves a record of receipt; otherwise, on most matters, your vote is counted in favour. If you want the resolution annulled, the challenge in court has its own period, three months from the communication as a rule and one year if the resolution is contrary to the Act or the statutes, and you must be up to date with your fees or deposit them with the court.

The minutes got my vote wrong. Can that be corrected?

Yes, if the minutes are signed and state the essentials: the Act lets their errors be corrected before the next meeting, which must ratify the correction. Ask the secretary in writing. If the correction is refused and the error changes the result, what remains is the challenge in court, within its period.