sallygiggles

I moved to Jaén Spain in September with my husband and very young children to study at the university. We had problems with the flat and landlady of the flat. She was harassing us and kicked us out of the flat. She wanted us out in days but we managed to negotiate to the end of October. We had a contract til June next year. She viewed the property on the last day of tenancy and said we would have to pay for a cleaner even though we spent hours cleaning the flat. She said nothing was broken and she will return our deposit when we have paid the electric bill that week. It has been three weeks since we moved out. She has told be the bill is 300 euro for less than 3 months electric but wouldn't show me bill. She is accusing us of breaking nearly everything in the flat when she previously said it was all fine in front of a Spanish person from the university. She won't give me my 600 euro deposit and I haven't heard from her since the accusations 2 weeks ago.
What can I do? Has anyone got any advice? 600 euro is a lot of money especially when you have a 22 month old and a 4 month old baby.

Rosemary

Hi and a warm welcome to the Spanish forum on BE. Myself and Fred James are the moderators for the Spanish forums whilst BEVS moderates Europe. Moderators are there to ensure that the site runs smoothly within the rules of BE. This is so that members gain the information that they are looking for and find their experiences on the forums to be friendly and worthwhile.

Problems and complaints should always be addressed to a moderator who will look into the matter and deal with it efficiently and fairly. Our members who post in the Spain Forums are usually friendly and helpful with a wealth of knowledge about the issues of living in Spain. I hope that you enjoy your time participating in the forums.

Please let me know if you need any further help.

Rosemary

rachelk

Hi Sally

I'm not sure there's much you can do after the event but there are some useful lessons to be learned.

If the rental contract is properly registered, then there is also an 'end of contract' document which is supposed to be signed by both parties and then the deposit, which is held by the authorities, can be returned. You would also have protection against being asked to leave - if my understanding is correct the landlord can only do this if s/he now needs the place to live in themselves and even then, I think it can only be used as a reason for not extending the contract, not for terminating it early.

Hopefully someone else here will have some ideas about how you can try to salvage something from this and at least get some of your deposit back.

FWIW I had a similar situation myself some years back. It was a legally registered contract but the landlord lived in Melilla and shortly before we were due to meet to formally terminate the agreement, he told me he couldn't make it and said if I signed my part of the document he'd sort it out later. Stupidly, naívely, I did so (even more stupid as I was only moving a few streets away and could have met him later on). He then started the nonsense about repairs and mentioned the TV - a very old tube TV - and said it wasn't working. of course it wasn't, I'd had to buy the digital decoder myself and was taking it with me thank you very much.
I wrote it off to experience and trust that karma will have sorted him out by now.