Every community has one: the apartment whose fees stopped arriving. Sometimes it is an oversight — a card that expired, a bank account closed after a move abroad. Sometimes it is a decision. Either way, the money missing from the community's account is money the paying owners quietly lend, month after month, to the neighbour who doesn't.
Spanish law gives a community real teeth here, and the last year has sharpened two of them: the Supreme Court has now said, in a settled line of rulings, exactly how long a community has to claim — and since April 2025 there is a new step every community must take before going to court. If you sit on a community board, pay fees to one, or are about to buy into one, this is the 2026 state of play.
If the words cuota, coeficiente or derrama are still fuzzy, start with our guide to community fees and derramas — this article picks up where that one ends: what happens when the money doesn't arrive.
The duty is not optional — and the community must act on it
Article 9.1.e of the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal makes contributing to common expenses a legal obligation attached to every unit. A community that lets arrears drift is not being kind; it is quietly transferring the cost to everyone else and, as we will see, running down a clock.
The first formal move is always the same: the junta approves the settlement of the debt (the liquidación de la deuda), which turns "the neighbour owes something" into a certified, dated figure. Everything that follows builds on that certificate.
The clock is real: five years
For years there was argument about how long a community had to claim unpaid fees — five years or fifteen. That argument is over.
In November 2025 the Supreme Court reiterated it once more (judgment 1726/2025, following a line already fixed in 2020–2023): community fees are periodic obligations, so they prescribe under article 1966.3ª of the Civil Code — five years, counted per unpaid instalment. The ruling even applies the five-year term to debts born before the 2015 Civil Code reform, unless the community validly interrupted prescription in time.
The practical reading cuts both ways. A community that sits on arrears for years is not accumulating a claim; it is losing one, instalment by instalment. And an owner being chased for fees from a decade ago has a defence the law now states plainly. Interruption — a proper, provable demand for payment — resets the count, which is precisely why professional administrators document every demand.
What a community can actually do
With the debt certified, the toolbox looks like this:
The debtor loses the vote. An owner who is not up to date when the junta meets can attend and speak, but cannot vote, and their share is left out of the majorities (article 15.2 LPH) — only judicially contesting the debt, or depositing it first, preserves the vote. The meeting notice itself must list which owners are in arrears — the law requires it, so being behind is never private for long.
The fast claim: the monitorio. Article 21 LPH gives communities a purpose-built payment procedure. With the certified debt and a prior demand for payment, the community files; if the debtor neither pays nor objects, the claim becomes enforceable — against bank accounts, wages or, ultimately, the property itself. Where the debtor forces the community to litigate, recoverable costs can include the community's lawyer.
Interest runs. The debt earns interest from the day each instalment fell due, and the community can agree rates above the legal one as a deterrent. Small unpaid quotas rarely stay small.
New since April 2025: the documented attempt to settle
This is the change many communities still miss. Organic Law 1/2025, in force since 3 April 2025, requires most civil claims — the community monitorio included — to be preceded by a documented attempt at out-of-court settlement (a MASC, in the law's acronym: a negotiation, mediation or equivalent attempt).
Two details matter. First, the traditional demand for payment under article 21.3 LPH is not a substitute — courts have been returning claims filed without the separate settlement attempt, and a returned claim is weeks or months lost. Second, done properly, the step is not wasted time: a formal, certified invitation to settle either recovers the debt without a courtroom or becomes the exhibit that lets the claim sail through.
This is procedure, not strategy — but it is exactly the kind of procedure that decides whether a community recovers its money this year or next.
Buying? The debt can come with the keys
Now the part every buyer should read twice. Community debt in Spain is not only personal — the unit itself answers for part of it. Under article 9.1.e LPH (the afección real), the property you buy is liable for the previous owner's unpaid community fees for the part of the current year already accrued plus the three previous natural years.
You do not inherit the old owner's debt personally; the community cannot touch your salary for it. But it can pursue the apartment you just bought, which in practice feels much the same.
The law also provides the shield: a sale before a notary requires a certificate of the community's debt position, issued by the community's secretary-administrator. Read it. Check the date. Do not let anyone talk you into waiving it — the waiver is legal, and it is how strangers end up paying a stranger's bills. If the certificate shows debt, the fix belongs in the price or in the completion mechanics, not in hope.
If you live abroad, the rules lean on you a little harder
A great deal of this island's ownership is lived from another country, and arrears cases often start not with refusal but with distance: a rotated bank card, a closed account, post arriving at an empty apartment.
Three habits keep an absent owner out of this article. Give the community a notification address that works — under the LPH, if you don't, notices pinned to the community board can count as served, and a junta you never heard about still binds you. Pay by direct debit from a Spanish or SEPA account that someone watches. And make sure there is a reachable administrator — one who answers in your language before a reminder becomes a certified demand, and long before it becomes a monitorio.
Arrears recovery is one of the things we do daily for the communities we administer — the certified demands, the settlement attempt the 2025 law now requires, the monitorio when it comes to that — with the owner treated firmly and correctly at every step. If your community is carrying debt it never seems to collect, this is the service, and this is where a conversation starts.
