Who buys in Fuerteventura: what the notaries' and registrars' figures mean for a community

A community of thirty-eight flats in Corralejo holds its annual meeting in a hotel function room on a Thursday in October. Eleven owners are in the room, nine more have sent a signed proxy, the president is from Milan, the treasurer from Leeds, and the agenda has been translated twice. Nobody in that room needs a statistics office to tell them that the island's communities are international. What they do need, when a lift has to be voted, a debtor abroad has to be chased or a notice has to reach forty letterboxes in six countries, is to know what the official figures actually say about who buys here and who lives here, because those two things are not the same, and the gap between them is where an administrator's work begins. The community is invented; the figures are not.

Three public sources count. The notaries' statistics centre counts every purchase deed signed in Spain and says which buyers were foreign, whether they lived in Spain or abroad and what they paid; its latest report, on the first half of 2026, is dated 15 October 2026. The Land Registrars count the same purchases weeks later, when they reach the Registry, and publish each quarter the share of homes bought by foreigners in every province; their latest covers April to June 2026. The Canary statistics institute counts the people who live here, by nationality and municipality, at 1 January each year; its latest figures are those of 1 January 2025. This note reads the three as they stood on 21 October 2026, says what each measures and what none of them measures, and then takes the figures down to the meeting room: the language of the minutes, the address an owner abroad must give, the proxy, the arrears and the bank route. Every figure is attributed and dated, there is no forecast in it, and the question of whether anyone may be stopped from buying belongs to the lawyers' side of our group, which keeps that file up to date.

Three counters, three moments of the same sale

The Consejo General del Notariado's Centro de Información Estadística, known by its initials CIEN, draws its figures from the deeds themselves, as the report's own note says: Los datos ofrecidos proceden de las escrituras públicas autorizadas por los notarios en el primer semestre de 2026. The data come from the deeds the notaries authorised in the first half of 2026, and the deed is the moment the buyer signs, so the notaries' count is the earliest of the three; it covers only «vivienda libre», free-market housing, and it records what the deed records: nationality, residence in Spain or abroad, the price. Its public report splits the country by autonomous community, so for us the unit is the Canary Islands; it does not publish the island.

The Colegio de Registradores' Estadística Registral Inmobiliaria counts a sale when the deed is registered, usually some weeks after the signature, and reports quarterly. It publishes the percentage of registered home purchases made by foreigners for every province, which is as close as any official series comes to Fuerteventura: the province of Las Palmas is Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura together, and Gran Canaria's 875,589 residents weigh on the provincial average far more than this island's 129,080. The registrars' own reading of their map is worth keeping in mind: La intensidad turística se configura como factor clave para la consecución de un mayor o menor peso relativo en compras de vivienda por extranjeros, correspondiendo las provincias cabeceras a provincias mediterráneas e islas con esta característica. Tourist intensity, in other words, is what decides a province's foreign share, and the provinces at the top are Mediterranean and island ones.

The Instituto Canario de Estadística, ISTAC, publishes who lives in each municipality, by nationality, at 1 January of each year, and defines its foreign-population figure as Número de personas de nacionalidad extranjera residentes en Canarias a 1 de enero de cada año. Hasta 2020, estas cifras se obtienen del Padrón Municipal de Habitantes y desde 2021, del Censo de Población. The figure is the number of foreign nationals resident in the Canaries at 1 January each year, taken from the municipal register until 2020 and from the population census since 2021. That series counts residents, not owners: an owner who lives in Hamburg and spends six weeks a year in Costa Calma is in the notaries' non-resident column and in no column of the population figures at all. Keep the three apart and the figures stop contradicting each other.

Spain, first half of 2026: fewer foreign deeds, higher prices

The notaries' report of 15 October 2026 counts 62,327 purchases of free-market homes by foreigners in Spain between January and June 2026, 13.0 % fewer than in the first half of 2025: Se trata del mayor descenso interanual desde el primer semestre de 2020. It is the sharpest year-on-year fall since the first half of 2020. Foreigners signed 18.3 % of the 341,283 home purchases of the half-year, down from 19.2 % a year earlier and 20.3 % in 2024.

The fall was not evenly shared. Los extranjeros residentes concentraron el 63,2% de las operaciones, con un descenso del 9,7% frente a la primera mitad de 2025. By contrast, las compraventas de los no residentes correspondieron al 36,8% restante, con un retroceso del 18,0% respecto al primer semestre de 2025, 22,940 deeds in all, which the report calls el menor volumen desde el primer semestre de 2021. In plain terms, resident foreigners signed 63.2 % of the deeds and bought 9.7 % less than a year earlier; non-residents signed the remaining 36.8 % and bought 18.0 % less, their lowest half-year since the first half of 2021. Prices moved the other way: foreigners paid on average €2,644 per square metre, 9.4 % more than a year earlier, and Los extranjeros no residentes continuaron siendo el grupo que pagó los precios más elevados, con una media de 3.493 €/m², frente a los 2.102 €/m² de los extranjeros residentes y los 1.971 €/m² de los compradores nacionales. Non-residents, that is, paid €3,493 per square metre against €2,102 for resident foreigners and €1,971 for Spanish buyers.

By nationality, Por nacionalidad, los compradores de Marruecos concentraron el mayor número de operaciones en el primer semestre de 2026, con 4.960 compraventas (8,0% del total), seguido de los de Reino Unido con 4.541 (7,3%), Italia (4.109; 6,6%), Rumanía (3.974; 6,4%) y Alemania (3.907; 6,3%). Moroccans came first with 4,960 deeds, then Britons with 4,541, Italians 4,109, Romanians 3,974 and Germans 3,907. The two columns have different faces: among non-resident buyers the Dutch led with 12.6 %, then Germans at 11.8 %, Britons at 10.4 % and Poles at 8.1 %; among resident buyers Moroccans led with 12.4 %, then Italians at 9.2 %, Romanians at 9.0 % and Britons at 5.5 %.

The registrars, counting registrations rather than signatures and quarters rather than half-years, published in August 2026 a figure that reads the opposite way, and both are true: El peso de compras de vivienda por extranjeros durante el segundo trimestre de 2026 ha sido del 15,98% (13,92% 1T26), muy por encima del peso del mismo trimestre del año precedente (14,1% 2T25). Foreigners made 15.98 % of the home purchases registered between April and June 2026, against 13.92 % in the first quarter and 14.1 % a year earlier. The registrars add that Este resultado supone el nivel máximo de la serie histórica disponible, the highest level of the available series, with somewhat more than 26,800 purchases by foreigners registered in the quarter, and that En todas las comunidades autónomas se ha incrementado el peso de compras por extranjeros, the share having risen in every autonomous community. For the whole of 2025 the same source had counted El 13,82% de las compras de vivienda de 2025 han sido formalizadas por extranjeros, a cierta distancia del máximo de la serie histórica (14,98% en 2023), con un descenso anual de -0,78 pp, 13.82 % of the year's purchases, below the series' maximum of 14.98 % in 2023. A share can rise while a volume falls, because the Spanish buyers' volume fell further, and a registration counted in June may be a deed signed in March. Neither series is wrong, and neither is a trend until the next one confirms it.

The Canary Islands and the province of Las Palmas

In the notaries' half-year the islands were among the three regions where foreign purchases fell most: Las caídas más intensas se produjeron en Cantabria (-20,5%), Islas Canarias (-20,3%) y Comunidad de Madrid (-19,7%). In numbers, the annex to the report gives 3,694 purchases by foreigners in the Canary Islands between January and June 2026 against 4,635 in the same months of 2025. The price those buyers paid rose all the same, to €3,171 per square metre from €2,891 a year earlier; the islands sit in the report's list of moderate increases, at 9.7 %: Con avances más moderados se situaron Islas Canarias (9,7%), Islas Baleares (9,3%), Galicia (5,2%), Cataluña (3,0%) y Aragón (0,4%).

The figure that matters most to a community is the split by residence, and in the islands it is the reverse of Spain's. Of the 3,694 Canary deeds, the report counts Islas Canarias (2.046 operaciones; 8,9% del total) among the regions where non-residents bought, that is, 2,046 purchases by foreigners who live abroad, more than half of all foreign purchases in the archipelago, while the islands took only 4.2 % of the purchases made by foreigners resident in Spain. Nationally, nearly two in three foreign buyers live in Spain; in the Canaries, in the first half of 2026, the majority of foreign buyers did not.

The registrars' quarterly share gives the islands their rank. In April to June 2026, Las comunidades autónomas que han registrado un mayor peso de compra por extranjeros durante el segundo trimestre han sido Illes Balears (32,27%), Comunitat Valenciana (31,03%), Canarias (29,33%), Región de Murcia (23,71%), Cataluña (17,63%) y Andalucía (15,95%). The Balearics, the Valencian region and the Canaries lead, the islands at 29.33 %. By province, Las provincias con mayor peso de compra de vivienda por extranjeros durante el segundo trimestre han sido Alicante (46,43%), Málaga (37,01%), Illes Balears (32,27%), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (32,25%), Las Palmas (26,55%), Girona (25,48%), Murcia (23,71%), Almería (20,96%) y Tarragona (17,65%). Santa Cruz de Tenerife stands at 32.25 % and Las Palmas at 26.55 %. So in the quarter to June 2026 one registered home purchase in four in our province went to a foreign buyer, and nearly one in three in the western province.

One quarter is a photograph, not a film. In the first quarter of 2026 the same table read Santa Cruz de Tenerife (26,05%), Girona (24,7%), Murcia (21,73%), Las Palmas (20,14%), and in the second quarter of 2025 Santa Cruz de Tenerife (35,72%), Málaga (33,29%), Illes Balears (28,42%), Las Palmas (24,83%). For the whole of 2025 the registrars' yearbook puts the provinces in this order: Las provincias con mayor peso de compra de vivienda por extranjeros durante el año 2025 han sido Alicante (43,29%), Málaga (32,80%), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (30,04%), Illes Balears (29,86%), Girona (25%), Las Palmas (21,72%), Murcia (21,42%), Almería (17,47%), Tarragona (15,86%) y Barcelona (14,21%). Las Palmas, then, read 24.83 % in the spring of 2025, 21.72 % over that whole year, 20.14 % in the first quarter of 2026 and 26.55 % in the second, a jump of more than six points in a single quarter. A community that reads 26.55 % as the new normal, or 20.14 % as the old one, is reading too much into either.

The same quarterly report gives the province's size. The registrars counted 3,102 registered home purchases in Las Palmas between April and June 2026, 11.2 % fewer than in the previous quarter, 724 of them new homes and 2,378 resales; over the twelve months to June the province registered 13,336 home purchases, 1.0 % fewer than in the previous twelve. The average registered price in the province was €3,059 per square metre in the quarter, and €2,735 per square metre over the twelve months, 14.7 % higher than a year earlier. None of these is a Fuerteventura figure; each is the nearest the public series come.

Who they are: the nationalities that buy in the islands

The notaries' report names the nationalities by region in two sentences, one for each column. Among non-residents, Los de Alemania por su parte reunieron una parte considerable de las operaciones en Islas Baleares (52,5%), Castilla-La Mancha (26,5%), Islas Canarias (22,3%) y Galicia (14,3%). Among residents, Italia fue la segunda nacionalidad en volumen de operaciones (9,2% del total), con peso destacado en Islas Canarias (22,3%), Islas Baleares (16,8%), Comunidad de Madrid (13,4%) y Cataluña (11,8%), and Los compradores de Reino Unido ocuparon el cuarto lugar (5,5% de las operaciones) y alcanzaron especial relevancia en Andalucía (11,2%), Región de Murcia (9,5%), Islas Canarias (8,4%) e Islas Baleares (8,1%). Read together: in the first half of 2026 more than one in five non-resident purchases in the Canaries was German, more than one in five resident purchases was Italian, and Britons were present in both columns without leading either.

The registrars' yearbook for 2025 says the same of the archipelago as a whole: British buyers lead the foreign purchases in Andalusia, Murcia and the Valencian region, alemanes en Illes Balears, franceses en Cataluña, italianos en Canarias, chinos en Comunidad de Madrid: Germans in the Balearics, French in Catalonia, Italians in the Canaries, Chinese in Madrid. For the country, the registrars' latest quarter ranks the British first with 6.99 % of foreign purchases, the Dutch at 6.94 %, Germans at 6.11 % and Moroccans at 6.09 %.

What a community should take from this is not a league table but a map of languages and habits. An Italian owner is, more often than not, a resident with a Spanish address, a Spanish bank account and a working knowledge of the language of the minutes; a German owner is, more often than not, a non-resident who will need the agenda in advance, a proxy and a route for the fees from a foreign account; a British owner may be either, and since 2021 is a non-EU national for every rule that turns on it. The figures do not say which of your owners is which. They say that a community in Fuerteventura should expect all three.

Who already lives here: the island's register, municipality by municipality

The notaries count buyers; ISTAC counts neighbours. At 1 January 2025 the island had 129,080 residents, of whom 40,402 held a foreign nationality, which by our arithmetic from those two counts is a little over 31 %. The largest foreign communities were the Italians, 9,802 people, then Colombians at 4,817, Germans at 4,012, Moroccans at 3,707 and Britons at 3,673, followed at a distance by Poles at 944, Venezuelans at 905 and French at 886. The series has risen every year since 2022: 35,130 foreign nationals at 1 January 2021, 34,682 in 2022, 37,421 in 2023, 39,011 in 2024 and 40,402 in 2025, while the island's total went from 119,278 to 129,080. The archipelago as a whole counted 2,258,866 residents and 342,612 foreign nationals, with Italians again the largest group at 55,553.

The island is not one market, and the municipalities show it. The table gives, for each of the six, the residents at 1 January 2025, the foreign nationals among them and the three largest groups, all from ISTAC's 2025 figures.

Two municipalities, La Oliva and Antigua, have nearly one foreign national for every Spanish one: by our arithmetic 13,705 of 29,864 and 6,429 of 14,027 are both just under 46 %. In La Oliva, which is Corralejo, El Cotillo and Lajares, the Italians alone are 5,310 people, more than the next four groups together. In Antigua, which is Caleta de Fuste, the British are the largest foreign group, 1,766, and it is the only municipality where they are. Pájara, from Costa Calma to Morro Jable, is the German municipality, 1,918, with Moroccan residents the second group. The capital and Tuineje are different places again: one resident in five holds a foreign passport, and the largest group in both is Colombian, 2,683 in Puerto del Rosario and 758 in Tuineje, people who buy, when they buy, as residents.

For comparison, Lanzarote counted 166,878 residents and 41,020 foreign nationals, Gran Canaria 875,589 and 89,813, Tenerife 966,469 and 153,696; and Spain, on the national institute's provisional count at 1 July 2026, 49,801,559 residents and 7,437,543 foreign nationals, 87,197 more than three months earlier. Fuerteventura's share of foreign residents is the highest of the four largest islands by some distance, and that is before a single non-resident owner is counted.

Resident or non-resident: the one distinction a community feels every month

The notaries' two columns are the same distinction the horizontal property law draws in practice, without ever using the word. An owner who lives on the island receives the notice at the flat, pays by a Spanish direct debit, walks to the meeting and reads the minutes in the language they were written in. An owner who lives abroad has to be reached, represented and collected from, and the law gives the community three tools for that, each of which works only if the owner uses it.

The first is the address. Article 9.1.h of the law makes it every owner's duty to Comunicar a quien ejerza las funciones de secretario de la comunidad, por cualquier medio que permita tener constancia de su recepción, el domicilio en España a efectos de citaciones y notificaciones de toda índole relacionadas con la comunidad. Every owner, that is, must give the secretary, by a means that proves receipt, an address in Spain for every notice concerning the community. The law then says what happens when the owner abroad has not done so: En defecto de esta comunicación se tendrá por domicilio para citaciones y notificaciones el piso o local perteneciente a la comunidad, surtiendo plenos efectos jurídicos las entregadas al ocupante del mismo. Without that address the flat itself is the address, and a notice handed to whoever occupies it has full legal effect. If the flat is empty and the notice cannot be delivered there, it se entenderá realizada mediante la colocación de la comunicación correspondiente en el tablón de anuncios de la comunidad, with full effect three days later. An owner in Munich who never gave an address in Spain is, in law, notified of every meeting and every resolution by a sheet of paper on a board in Costa Calma. Our note on the obligations of a non-resident owner explains what else follows from that, including the tax calendar that is not the community's business but is the owner's.

The second is the proxy. Article 15.1 could not be simpler: La asistencia a la Junta de propietarios será personal o por representación legal o voluntaria, bastando para acreditar ésta un escrito firmado por el propietario. Attendance is in person or by a representative, and a letter signed by the owner is enough to prove the representation. A signed letter is enough; no notary, no apostille, no particular form. The owner who cannot fly in for the meeting keeps the vote by sending the paper, and the notice of the annual meeting, which article 16.3 says must go out cuando menos, con seis días de antelación, at least six days in advance, is the moment to decide whom to send it to. Our guide to the AGM when you live abroad walks through the convening, the proxy and the majorities.

The third is the quorum, and here the figures bite hardest. Article 16.2 provides that if the first call does not gather a majority of owners holding a majority of the quotas, se procederá a una segunda convocatoria de la misma, esta vez sin sujeción a «quórum», which may be held the same day half an hour later. A community in which more than half of the foreign owners live abroad, which is what the notaries' Canary column describes, meets on second call almost as a rule, and resolutions are then taken by those present and represented. That is lawful, and it is also why the proxy matters more here than in a block in Madrid.

Arrears, languages and the bank route: the figures at the meeting

Arrears are the point where residence becomes cost. Article 15.2 lets owners who are behind with their fees attend but says they podrán participar en sus deliberaciones si bien no tendrán derecho de voto, and article 16.2 requires that La convocatoria contendrá una relación de los propietarios que no estén al corriente en el pago de las deudas vencidas a la comunidad. Recovering a debt from an owner who lives in Lyon or Leeds follows the same Spanish procedure as from one who lives upstairs, but every step that depends on reaching the debtor, from the demand to the service of the court papers, runs through the address of article 9.1.h, and a debtor with no address in Spain is a slower debtor. Our note on unpaid fees sets out the route and the five-year limit the Supreme Court fixed in 2025.

Languages follow directly from the table above. In a community in La Oliva the room will hold Italian, English and German owners in roughly that order; in Pájara, German first; in Antigua, English first. The law has no language rule at all: the minutes are kept in the book in Spanish, and article 19.3 only says that El acta de las reuniones se remitirá a los propietarios de acuerdo con el procedimiento establecido en el artículo 9. The minutes go to the owners by the procedure of article 9, that is, to the address of article 9.1.h. Everything beyond that is a service the community buys or an administrator provides: a bilingual chair, a translated agenda, a summary of the minutes in the owners' languages. Our note on the language of meetings and minutes explains what a translation is worth in law and what it is worth in practice.

The bank route is the quiet one. A resident foreigner pays like any neighbour; a non-resident pays from a German, Italian or British account, and a community whose budget assumes Spanish direct debits will spend its administrator's hours on returned receipts unless the fees can be collected by SEPA direct debit from any account in the euro area and by transfer from outside it, with a receipt for every charge. That is a question for the administrator's contract rather than for the law, and one worth asking before the next budget, not after.

What the figures do not say, and the cap that does not exist

Three things the figures cannot tell you. They cannot tell you how many owners in your own community are foreign or absent: no public series counts owners by building, and the only register that does is the community's own, the list of addresses under article 9.1.h, which the administrator keeps and which data-protection rules keep inside the community. They cannot tell you Fuerteventura's foreign share of purchases: the registrars stop at the province and the notaries at the archipelago, and any island percentage you read in the press is somebody's estimate. And they cannot tell you where the market is going: a half-year in which foreign deeds fell 13 % while the foreign share of registrations hit a record is a warning against reading either as a direction.

On the question that fills the island's newspapers, whether non-residents may be stopped from buying, the position on 21 October 2026 is that no Canarian, Spanish or European rule limits who may buy a home in the Canary Islands; the European Commission's draft Affordable Housing Act of 9 September 2026 would allow limits by use, not by passport, and is a draft; and the Canary Government is pressing for more. In a statement to the regional parliament reported on 13 October 2026, its housing minister said the Government had sent Madrid a set of amendments to the European draft so that outermost regions could limit, for a time, the purchase, use and rental of homes by non-resident foreigners, No pedimos un privilegio, pedimos que el Reglamento aplique el artículo 349 del Tratado de la Unión, con medidas temporales, proporcionadas y complementarias a la construcción de vivienda, we ask for no privilege, he said, only that the Regulation apply article 349 of the Treaty, with temporary, proportionate measures that complement the building of homes; and on 16 October the press reported a Government draft that would require ten years' registration as a resident to buy. Both are proposals. The one limit actually in force is fifty years old and concerns rural land and non-EU buyers. The lawyers' side of our group keeps that file, with its dates, in a note that is updated as the debate moves.

What we do

Half the owners we serve live abroad, and our administration for non-resident owners is built around that figure rather than in spite of it. For an owner abroad we hold the proxy or arrange digital attendance where the statutes allow, send the agenda before the meeting and the outcome after it in English, and keep minutes, accounts and notices in English and Spanish, with German summaries on request. Fees are collected by SEPA direct debit from any account in the euro area, with British and other accounts supported and a receipt for every charge. Incidents are reported from the owner's phone and closed with before-and-after photographs; IBI, inspection dates and insurance renewals are tracked with reminders before they fall due; every owner receives a quarterly report readable in five minutes and has an owner portal with every document and every vote. Queries are answered within 24 hours from three service points on the island, by a firm whose principal has been a colegiada of the Las Palmas bar since 1998. If your community is working out how to run itself with owners in six countries, send us the form and you will have a fixed fee, with its scope, within one working day.

Common questions

Is there an official figure for foreign buyers in Fuerteventura alone?

No. The notaries' public report stops at the Canary Islands and the registrars' at the province of Las Palmas, which also contains Gran Canaria and Lanzarote. In the quarter to June 2026 the registrars put the foreign share of registered home purchases in the province at 26.55 %, and for the whole of 2025 at 21.72 %. Any percentage for the island alone is an estimate by whoever publishes it.

How many of the owners in my community live abroad?

No public statistic knows. The nearest proxy is the notaries' residence split for the archipelago, where in the first half of 2026 more than half of the foreign purchases, 2,046 of 3,694, were by non-residents. The only reliable count is the community's own: the addresses for notifications that every owner must give under article 9.1.h, which the administrator keeps. Ask for the number, not the names.

Does the law treat a non-resident owner differently?

No. The duties are the same: pay the fees, give an address in Spain for notifications, respect the rules. What changes is the practice: without a Spanish address the owner is notified at the flat and then on the notice board; without a proxy the owner has no vote; without a European or British account arranged in advance the fees arrive late. The tax duties of a non-resident are a separate list and not the community's affair.

Is a limit on purchases by non-residents coming?

Nothing is in force and nothing has been passed. As of 21 October 2026 the Canary Government has sent Madrid amendments to the European Commission's draft Affordable Housing Act and has drafted a residence requirement for buyers, both reported in mid-October; the European draft itself would allow limits by use, not by nationality, and is still a draft. The lawyers' side of our group follows the file and dates every step.

The notaries say foreign purchases fell 20 % in the islands. Should my community expect fewer owners from abroad?

The figure compares deeds signed in the first half of 2026 with the first half of 2025 and says nothing about any one building or about the next half-year; in the same months the registrars recorded the highest foreign share of purchases in their series. A community plans for the owners it has: the ones on the list under article 9.1.h, with their addresses, their proxies and their bank accounts.