Every autumn the same message arrives from owners in Hamburg, Leeds and Milan: «Can I join the junta by video?» The honest answer, in September 2026, has three parts. The Horizontal Property Act does not say you can, and does not say you cannot; the only rule that ever said so expressly died on 31 December 2021; and a bill that would write video attendance into the Act is in the Congress, in its amendments phase, with no date. Anyone who tells you that «since the 2025 reform» juntas can be held online is quoting a myth that has spread through administrators' blogs — the Act's article on meetings was last touched in 1999, and we have read it again in the consolidated text this week. This piece sets out what the law says today, what the 2021 rule allowed and why it mattered, what the bill would change and where it stands, and the protocol we use meanwhile for communities with owners in five countries — a hybrid meeting with a proxy behind every screen. Quotations are in Spanish with the reading in English.
What the Act says today: a place, a day and an hour
The Ley de Propiedad Horizontal describes the junta as a meeting somewhere. The convocation must state «los asuntos a tratar, el lugar, día y hora en que se celebrará en primera o, en su caso, en segunda convocatoria» — the agenda, the place, the day and the hour of the first and second call (art. 16.2). Attendance «será personal o por representación legal o voluntaria, bastando para acreditar ésta un escrito firmado por el propietario» — in person or through a representative, a signed writing being enough to prove the delegation (art. 15.1). The minutes must record «la fecha y el lugar de celebración» — the date and the place (art. 19.2.a) — and the list of those present and those represented, with their quotas (art. 19.2.d). The words «videoconferencia» and «telemático» do not appear anywhere in the Act. That is the whole legal position: the law was written for a room, and it has never been rewritten for a screen.
The date matters because of the myth. Article 16 was last amended by the Ley 8/1999; articles 15, 18 and 19 likewise. The justice-efficiency law of January 2025 did touch the Act, but what it changed was the three-fifths majority for holiday lets (art. 17.12, with effect from 3 April 2025) and two related provisions — nothing about how a meeting is attended. A March 2026 decree-law retouched the one-third majority for renewable installations (art. 17.1). None of it says a word about video. When you read «since the reform, juntas can be held online or hybrid», ask which article: there is none.
Nothing regional adds to it. Horizontal property is state civil law, and the Canary Islands have no rule of their own on communities. The only territory with its own regime is Catalonia, whose Civil Code — as the Catalan groups reminded the Congress on 26 May — already allows telematic meetings; that regime does not reach Fuerteventura.
The one time it was expressly allowed: May to December 2021
The pandemic produced the only text that ever regulated a video junta, and it is worth reading because every serious protocol since has copied it. The Real Decreto-ley 8/2021 of 4 May suspended the duty to convene and hold the junta «hasta el 31 de diciembre de 2021» (art. 2.1), extended the last approved budget and the sitting officers (art. 2.3), and allowed a meeting only for resolutions that could not wait (art. 3.1). For that meeting it said: «la junta de propietarios podrá celebrarse por videoconferencia o por conferencia telefónica múltiple, siempre que: a) Todos los propietarios dispongan de los medios necesarios, lo que será comprobado por el administrador con antelación a la junta; y b) El secretario reconozca la identidad de los propietarios asistentes a la junta y así lo exprese en el acta» — by videoconference or multi-party call, provided every owner had the means, checked by the administrator beforehand, and the secretary verified the identity of those attending and recorded it in the minutes (art. 3.2). The resolution was deemed adopted where the secretary sat. The same article allowed a vote without any meeting, by post or electronic communication, with ten calendar days to cast it (art. 3.3), and made a breach of those guarantees an express ground for challenge (art. 3.5).
The decree-law had a sunset, and it was not renewed. Companies got the opposite treatment the same spring: the Ley 5/2021 of 12 April added an article to the Companies Act under which the statutes may authorise general meetings «celebradas sin asistencia física de los socios» — held without the physical presence of shareholders — provided identity and effective participation are guaranteed (Ley de Sociedades de Capital, art. 182 bis). A limited company in Corralejo has held its annual meeting online with full legal cover since 2021. The community of owners next door has not.
So can a community hold a video junta today?
It is not forbidden, and it is not regulated — which is a different thing from being safe. The president of the national council of administrators' colleges put it plainly to the press in June, when the bill was taken into consideration: it was hard to understand «que las juntas telemáticas estuvieran reguladas y plenamente aceptadas en prácticamente todos los ámbitos profesionales, empresariales y administrativos, y sin embargo no existiera una regulación clara para las comunidades de propietarios» — that telematic meetings were regulated and accepted almost everywhere, and yet there was no clear regulation for communities of owners.
The risk is the challenge. A resolution is impugnable «cuando sean contrarios a la ley o a los estatutos» — when contrary to the law or the statutes (art. 18.1.a). Those entitled to sue are the owners who voted against, the absentees «por cualquier causa» and those wrongly deprived of their vote, provided they are up to date with their fees (art. 18.2); the action lapses at three months, or at one year for acts contrary to the law or the statutes, and for absent owners the clock starts when the resolution is communicated to them (art. 18.3). A challenge does not suspend the resolution unless the judge so orders (art. 18.4). We know of no settled line of court decisions on juntas held by video after 2021, and we would not build a community's derrama on a gap in the case law: an owner who did not consent to the format, was not identified properly, or could not vote has an argument, and a year to make it.
Three practical readings follow, and they are ours, not the Act's. First, a junta in which every owner attends or is represented, and nobody objects, is hard to attack — the Act itself lets the owners meet validly without any convocation «siempre que concurran la totalidad de los propietarios y así lo decidan» (art. 16.3). Second, a hybrid meeting — a room at the stated place and hour, with video for those abroad — satisfies the letter of articles 16.2 and 19.2.a, which a purely virtual meeting does not. Third, a proxy behind every screen removes the argument altogether: the owner in Hamburg who follows the debate on video is, for the minutes, an owner represented by a signed writing under article 15.1, and her vote counts whatever a court later says about the camera.
The bill in Congress: what it would change
The text is short. The Grupo Parlamentario Popular tabled the Proposición de Ley de modificación de la Ley 49/1960 in the Congress on 14 November 2025 (expediente 122/000240, published on 21 November). It has a single article with three points. Article 15.1 would read: «La asistencia a la Junta de propietarios será personal, por videoconferencia o por representación legal o voluntaria, bastando para acreditar esta un escrito firmado por el propietario» — attendance in person, by videoconference or by representation. Article 9.1.h would let each owner give the secretary «el domicilio en España o una dirección de correo electrónico a efectos de citaciones y notificaciones» — an address in Spain or an e-mail address for notices. Article 19.1 would allow the minutes book to be kept «en formato y soporte electrónico conforme al modelo aprobado por resolución de la Dirección General de Seguridad Jurídica y Fe Pública» — in electronic form, on the model approved by the registries directorate. Its final provision puts the law in force the day after publication in the Boletín Oficial del Estado.
Two things in the text deserve attention before anyone plans around it. The preamble says video attendance should be possible «si así lo ha aprobado previamente la junta de propietarios, o lo tiene incluido en sus estatutos» — where the junta has approved it beforehand or the statutes provide for it — but the article as drafted carries no such condition and no guarantee of identity or of the vote; the Basque group told the plenary exactly that, voted for taking the bill into consideration and added that the text «tal y como se encuentra, no debiera ver la luz en el Boletín Oficial del Estado» — as it stands, it should not reach the official gazette. Expect the amendments to add conditions of the 2021 kind. And the sponsor himself defended the hybrid model from the rostrum — «juntas de propietarios físicas y virtuales a la vez» — so that older owners keep their seat in the room: nothing in the bill would force a community to go online.
Where it stands as we write
The Congress plenary took the bill into consideration on 26 May 2026 by 306 votes to 33, with 10 abstentions; Junts voted against because Catalonia already legislates the matter. The bill went to the Comisión de Justicia with full legislative competence, which normally means the committee settles the Congress's text without a further plenary vote; publication for the committee ran from 8 to 12 June, and the amendments phase opened on 12 June. The deadline for amendments, first set at 30 June, has been extended three times, the last to 16 September 2026. After the amendments come the rapporteurs' report, the committee's dictamen, the Senate's two months and the Boletín Oficial del Estado; no date is fixed for any of them. A twin text the same group tabled in the Senate in November 2024 was taken into consideration there in February 2025 and has not moved since. We have read the daily summaries of the official gazette from 26 May to 9 September 2026: no amendment of the Ley 49/1960 has been published, and the consolidated text of article 16 still carries 1999 as its last change. Until the gazette prints it, the law is the one described above.
Meanwhile: the hybrid junta, done safely
For the communities we administer the annual meeting is built so that no resolution depends on the camera.
- A rule of the house, approved once. The junta adopts, by the ordinary majority of article 17.7, a resolution setting out how remote attendance is organised — the platform, the identification, the roll-call vote, the proxy. A clause in the statutes is stronger, but changing the statutes needs unanimity (art. 17.6) and the clause binds future buyers only once registered (art. 5); a resolution the owners voted for is, in practice, what most communities can reach.
- A convocation with a place. The notice names the room, the day and the hour of both calls (art. 16.2), the agenda, the video link and the list of owners in arrears, and goes out under article 9.1.h — six days before the ordinary junta at the very least (art. 16.3); ours goes out weeks before, with the documents.
- A proxy behind every screen. Each owner who will attend by video also signs the proxy form — to the president, the administrator or a neighbour, instructed item by item — and returns it before the meeting starts. The minutes list her as represented (art. 19.2.d); her vote is safe whatever happens to the connection.
- Identity, checked and written down. The secretary identifies each remote attendee on camera and records in the minutes who attended by video, the way article 3.2 of the 2021 decree-law required.
- Votes by name and quota. Every vote is taken by roll-call and recorded with the names for and against and their quotas where the majority depends on it (art. 19.2.f); owners in arrears speak but do not vote (art. 15.2).
- The minutes and the 30 days. The minutes give the room as the place, are signed by president and secretary within ten calendar days, and are sent to every owner under article 9 (art. 19.3); for resolutions that need a qualified majority, the owners who were absent and duly cited count as votes in favour unless they object to the secretary within 30 calendar days of receiving them (art. 17.8). The convocations, proxies and the other papers of the meeting stay in the secretary's file for five years (art. 19.4); the recording, if one is made, stays with them.
- No votes by e-mail without a meeting. The 2021 rule that allowed it is gone, and a vote collected by e-mail has no legal basis today; the nearest the Act comes is the meeting of all the owners without a convocation (art. 16.3), which is still a meeting.
The protocol costs a community nothing but discipline, and it survives the reform intact: when the bill passes, the proxy stops being necessary and becomes a convenience.
Where we come in
For the communities we administer the convocation is published on our owner platform the day it is issued, in English, Spanish or German, with the proxy form ready to sign and return the same evening; the accounts, the budget and the quotes sit beside it, so that an owner in Leeds reads the agenda before the meeting and not after. We chair the hybrid junta by the protocol above, keep the identification and the roll-call in the minutes, and send the acta with the 30-day notice to the owners who were not there. Our AGM guide for owners abroad covers the notice, the proxy and the majorities; the president-from-abroad piece what a chair who lives elsewhere can and cannot do; the annual accounts piece how to read the papers before you vote; and the autumn checklist the calendar the meeting sits in. The administration for non-resident owners page describes what an owner abroad sees, and a quote is a form away. We will update this piece the week the reform is published.
Common questions
Can our community hold the junta entirely by video?
Not with legal cover. The Horizontal Property Act neither allows nor forbids it; the only express rule, article 3 of the Real Decreto-ley 8/2021, expired on 31 December 2021, and the bill that would allow attendance by videoconference is in the amendments phase in the Congress. A community that meets only online relies on nobody challenging it: any absent or dissenting owner who is up to date with the fees may sue within a year for a resolution contrary to the law. A hybrid meeting — a room at the stated place and hour, video for those abroad, and a signed proxy for every remote owner — is what we run instead.
Is a resolution adopted in a video or hybrid junta valid?
It is valid unless a court annuls it. Resolutions can be challenged when they are contrary to the law or the statutes, by the owners who voted against, the absentees and those wrongly deprived of their vote, within three months, or one year for resolutions contrary to the law; for absent owners the deadline runs from the day the minutes reach them. A challenge does not suspend the resolution unless the judge orders it. The proxy is what removes the argument: an owner who voted through a signed representative under article 15.1 has voted, whatever is said about the camera.
Will the new law force our community to hold meetings online?
No. As drafted, the bill adds videoconference as a third form of attendance next to attending in person and by proxy, lets owners give an e-mail address for notices and allows an electronic minutes book; its preamble says video attendance should follow a prior decision of the junta or a statutory clause, and the sponsor defended the hybrid meeting in the plenary so that older owners keep their seat in the room. The amendments are expected to add conditions on identity and voting of the kind the 2021 rule had. A community that prefers a room will keep its room.
When will the reform be in force?
Nobody knows. The Congress took the bill into consideration on 26 May 2026; the amendments phase in the Comisión de Justicia opened on 12 June and its deadline has been extended to 16 September 2026; the committee's report, the Senate and publication in the Boletín Oficial del Estado still lie ahead, and the text enters into force the day after it is published. Until that day the Act is the one written in 1999 for a room, and the safe protocol is the hybrid junta with a proxy behind every screen.
