A PROPOSED law will allow homeowners to cut off utilities if their property is occupied by squatters without the landlords being deemed criminals.
The Partido Popular (PP) aims to use its majority in the Senate to force a change in the Codigo Penal (criminal code) to help with the country’s problem with squatters.
Currently if it passes a certain point and occupation becomes established, properties become occupants’ official address even if the way that they occupy the building is illegitimate.
Depriving squatters of essential services was previously considered to be a violation of their rights and therefore a crime of coercion – it is this that the PP party will change as they insist that now property owners do not have to keep paying bills.
Cutting off utilities should allow these home owners to recover their properties sooner.
The PP deems that this move is urgent and warns that Spain ‘has a problem with squatters’ and that the government’s measures continue to be ‘insufficient’ in their proposed bill.
Catalunya is the autonomous community with the most trespassing crimes in Spain: their cases make up 42% of the country’s total with 7,009 trespassing incidents in the region last year.
Andalucia has the second most incidents, followed by Valencia, and then Madrid.
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Magistrates of the Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona met last March to establish criteria in cases of trespassing and confirmed that property owners ‘are not obliged to maintain the utilities to said property’.
According to the PP, this measure will now be extended to other areas by judges.
This proposed change will be debated and voted on in the Senate today, and with its Senate majority, the PP is expecting the proposal to pass – its final approval does, however, depend on parties like Junts or the PNV.
The proposal follows the PP’s attempt to implement an anti-squatting law in 2024 which continues to be stalled in congress with repeated extensions.
The current government is disputing the PP’s current claims about the severity of the country’s issues with squatters – the Housing Minister is insisting that the problem is being overstated and that squatting is not a major national problem.
Contradicting this, the PP argues that the issue is urgent and that property owners are becoming victims once more as they cannot even remove occupants or cut utilities without being treated as criminals.
Therefore, they enter the Senate today with the hope that they can change the Codigo Penal.
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