DOWNANDOUT

Apologies for the poor formatting in the above post - I was copying and pasting the Eviction definitions from various websites.

I have decided that I'd rather check whether this new law is legally applicable in our court case rather than risk more delay and uncertainty caused by this 'Social Services ' procedure.

I think the Judge may have made a mistake and assumed the start date for our eviction process was after 6th March 2019 rather than 24th May 2018.

The problem is that our lawyer has accepted the Judges decision and is not keen to raise an objection and says it would cost us more money and further delay the eviction process.

So I've just sent lots of emails to different well respected lawyers asking the question whether the new law can be used retroactively for eviction trials dated before 6th March 2019.

I am expecting a reply from each lawyer asking for a fee for their 'Yes' or 'No' answer but I might strike lucky.

jonboy

Earlier you spoke about contacting the tenant's political party and advising them of his behaviour. Instead it may be of greater effect to contact the opposition party as they may be more incentivised to make use of the info? Be wary of being sued for slander etc. You may need to hint and lead rather than be direct.

missile

or maybe just hinting to the tenant that you intend to leak that info would be enough?

DOWNANDOUT

Looks like he's made up a story that he's damaged his hand at work , in a legal dispute whether it's work related , has taken unpaid leave but no income since last Aug . He's provided documentation to prove the latter so Social Services have categorised him as being 'vulnerable' and that's why the Courts have suspended eviction.

But I know from past history that this tenant , with the help of a 'political friend' who runs a construction company, fabricates evidence without one iota of fear (because the Courts don't check the authenticity of the evidence) . I can easily imagine that any documented proof is highly questionable but the Social Services won't check as they are bombarded with local social issues. They'll take the easy way out and just let the tenant make up any story to stop the eviction or drag it out for as long as possible.

We have decided that this is cannot continue for much longer because the Court process is useless . We will wait a month and then use alternative ways to remove this tenant from our property.

In the meantime , I am going to contact the Social Services and tell them my side of the story and point them to some internet sites with media stories about this tenant . Plus you-tube videos showing how he is still producing 'Tourist Guide' films and videos even with one good hand . He seems to have enough monies to use a computer and access to the internet but not enough money to pay his water bills. That his parents live above our flat and he should have no problem finding emergency accommodation if he is evicted.

I've also informed them to double-check any documentation that he's sent them, especially if it mentions that building company.

Petehesk

I run a rental business in Valencia. We had a bad experience with a Spanish family some time ago. since then I have not done a long rental with the Spanish. The problem is that the locals know how to work the system.

DOWNANDOUT

I actually think its the Spanish State and Court system that have created ways to maximise a landlords 'lawyer/court' costs while allowing legal 'loophole' opportunities for the tenant and his lawyer.

For example , here is one of the criteria for 'Free Legal Aid' (might be out of date now).
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The applicant shall not exceed the following thresholds:

1.Incomes must not be more than two times the IPREM (Public Income Index, which is a wage indicator) when the applicant is not part of a family unit. 
2.Two and a half times the IPREM if the applicant is part of a family unit (less than 4 members). 
3.Three times the IPREM if the family unit comprises 4 or more people. 

In 2016-2017 the IPREM was € 537,84 per month
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My tenant saved over 36,000 euros in unpaid rent and managed to pay 18k euros to stop the 1st eviction by enervation. I think he must have paid for his own lawyers for the appeals to 'Audiencia Provinciales' and 'Supreme Court Of Spain' . Yet he still was able to get 'Free Legal Aid' because he managed to 'hide' his savings elsewhere , probably in his parents bank accounts. By getting free legal aid he gained a WIN-WIN scenario, because he gets to delay eviction for 2 years because of the backlog of court cases in Spain . If he'd managed to succeed in getting through the front door process of the Supreme Court, he may have been able to stall eviction for another 5 years.

Also , when you get a free-legal aid lawyer, the lawyers advise the tenants to purposely 'dismiss' them to delay court proceedings. The Courts then have to contact the 'Free Legal Aid Bar Association' to consider the dismissal and recruit another lawyer (delays court proceedings for 2 weeks appox). He sacked his own lawyers on 3 -4 occasions and the law courts allowed him to do it ! There is no law to prevent you from sacking your lawyer , but there is a law that says all court proceedings must stop until there is a legal representative. If the landlord raises a complaint he will have to pay 180 -200 euros in costs , plus the tenant has a right to appeal against your complaint to delay things even further . Every notification by the judge can be appealed against at no cost to the tenant when he is using free legal aid.

The whole Spanish Justice system is geared to sponging as much money from landlords and they will just cause worse problems for the Spanish people , because no-one will risk renting to them.

m2m2012

Why couldn't something like this happen with a short term rental?

missile

Some more bad news for OP >

DOWNANDOUT

Yes , we've read the same thing and its been decreed in law on the 31st March 2020 . The tenant will be probably be deemed vulnerable and allowed another 6 months before being evicted.

Unsure why the Spanish govt is not paying compensation to landlords for this delay because many are also struggling financially, especially if they have also lost their jobs and need to pay mortgages on their rented properties.

I don't think the Spanish govt have thought this through properly but what choice did they have? They can't have families kicked out on the streets en masse and this law has been rushed in but is also protecting tenants like ours who has used the terrible Spanish law system to evade paying us over 18k euros in rent.

Things don't look good for Spain (and many other countries including UK) on the economic front and unfortunately the next 5-7 years are going to be the terrible for everyone around the world , especially for the poor people who need to work to eat.

With regards the future of our property in Spain , things look very bleak indeed because there is absolutely nothing we can do with the flat because of the continued threat of this virus for at least the next 12-18 months (the tenant, although causing our family terrible strife, may as well just live in it). I think the big landlords who own blocks of flats will just pull all investment out of Spain and there will be terrible social housing crisis with families living rough and lots of political unrest.

To be honest , I cannot believe how surreal these last 3-4 months have been.

DOWNANDOUT

Latest update:

Since the Courts recommenced work just over a month ago , our solicitor filed a request to the judge for another eviction date. Remember that the law states that if a tenant is deemed vulnerable by the Social Services (ie. the tenant claimed he hurt his hand and could not work since Aug 2019) the eviction will be suspended for a max of 1 month. Obviously that was several months ago due to the Cov19 virus lockdown and all legal processes that got caught in 'mid-stream' had to be rewound back to the start again.

So we are now awaiting this SCNE body to confirm another eviction date.

We fully expect the tenant to try and delay the process even further by maybe claiming that the Social Services haven't been able to assist him or that he needs more time to find another flat because of the COV19 issues, or that he is self isolating , etc etc.

In the meantime , we have worked out that the tenant owes us over 11k euros in court/lawyer costs and backdated rent (+ incremental yearly rent increase + compounded interest).

We also found (too late now) the email from our last solicitor back in 2016 informing us that the tenants contacted them and offered 40k euros for the flat . Amazing! He didn't pay rent for 10 yrs (ie. 36k euros + interest) and then offered our own unpaid rent to try and buy our property .

So the journey to evict this tenant continues , 4 years on and still counting.

jonboy

Thank you for the update. I guess it is a case of keep on keeping on. I know how dispiriting the situation can be and how it can sometimes affect relationships and our own outlook upon life. I wish you well.

DOWNANDOUT

If we do evict the tenant (fingers crossed) we were thinking of installing a security door to prevent squatters and others breaking in . Does anyone know of any reputable companies in the Calpe area that we could contact?

DOWNANDOUT

Current update:

1. Tenant still not evicted
2. SCNE still not provided an eviction date even though it should only take 10 days (its now nearly 2 months) . I think the 'Local Government' and 'State' have secretly asked them to delay providing eviction dates.
3. In the meantime the tenant submitted another petition claiming increased vulnerability due to COV-19 .
4. The court rejected the petition because of a rule of law and given him 5 days to appeal against their decision.

So here we are, 2.5 yrs after mistakenly using the legal courts to evict this tenant- we should have found alternative ways outside of this legally biased justice system.

m2m2012

Next time someone asks about moving to Spain to open a bar or a business they should be directed to this thread.

inbarcelona

I don´t know how you remain so calm.
I would be fuming......and I would have sent a group of "heavies" round long ago to turf him and his belongings out onto the street. Seal the place up for a while and stay in the UK for a few months.
They are hardly going to extradite you to Spain.