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This expert on property law explains the differences between the different instances in which a person enters a home illegally along with possible solutions ·
Marina Ortiz
Monday, 17 March 2025, 14:09
The possibility of a person entering our home, whether or not it is the one in which we live permanently, is one of the greatest concerns of many citizens and residents in Spain.
Despite squatting not being an issue that affects the majority of the country's homeowners, the cases that come to light about it resonate strongly and cause fear and controversy about how this type of housing problem is, or should be, handled.
People who enter a house that is not theirs to live in are known colloquially in Spanish as 'okupas', but the truth is that squatting or 'okupación' is something that, as a specific term, is not included in the law and is defined with other concepts that are often not fully understood, thereby labelling all cases as though they were the same. This can mean that we are not aware of how to proceed in each specific case, what legal recourse we have (if any) and what actions we should avoid in order to be harmed as little as possible.
That is why criminal lawyer and legal analyst, Miguel Ángel Mejías, has shared a video on his Youtube channel in which he endeavours to explain what surrounds what is popularly known as squatting - or 'okupación' - and what we should know about the different assumptions that occur today .
Mejías explains the types of squatting and their possible legal solutions: " There are 3 types of squatting: the crime of 'allanamiento', trespassing, the crime of 'usurpación de bienes inmuebles', usurpation of real estate, and the crime of 'inquiokupación'. We differentiate between the first two because they are the most similar", he says, and goes on to detail what each one consists of:
'Allanamiento': Trespassing offence - when a private individual enters or stays in a dwelling - 'morada'. "'Morada' is, basically, the place where you live, your home," your primary residence
'Usurpación': encroaching upon a property that does not constitute a dwelling - a classic example would be a third residential property or business premises.
Crime of 'inquiokupación': "It is not defined as a crime as such, but we could call it a kind of swindle. Example: a man who pretends to be solvent, brings his false payslip and signs a rental contract with the landlord, with the premeditated intention of not paying the rent after having paid a deposit or the first month's rent, and sometimes they don't even do that." According to Mejías, these cases are usually brought to court through civil proceedings because many judges do not tend to consider it a crime.
These are the possible solutions given by Mejías depending on the time that has passed since you became aware of squatting occurring at your house or second home:
In the first example, he gives the assumption that if you go out to get bread and someone enters the house, he says that " the police, in accordance with their protocol, have to evict the occupants and arrest them ." In view of this fact, he says that many people may think that this is not done because of what "appears on television", indicating that this belief is a lie. "It's one of the many lies you'll see on television. The police officers will be able to throw them out as long as they can prove a crime of 'in flagrante delicto', which are facts that prove that they have just squatted your house. So, if you go to do the shopping and five minutes later you come back and they got into your house, then record everything, go to the police station to report the squatters for breaking and entering and accompany everything with a request for precautionary eviction measures , that is to say that they throw the squatters out as a precautionary measure and then they will see who the real owner is, which will obviously be proven to be you."
Another case given by Mejías is that, in the event they begin squatting in a property that is not your primary residence, your place of normal occupation: "You will have to go through civil proceedings by means of a lawsuit or criminal proceedings by means of a complaint for a crime of usurpation of real estate."
Finally, he explains what we can do in the event that a tenant does not want to pay the rent but continues to stay in that property, which is not theirs: "Same case as for the crime of trespassing: file a complaint, but this time for fraud, not for trespassing . In which the immediate expulsion of the occupants is again requested as a precautionary measure," says the lawyer.
In this chaos Mejías tries to answer the following question: "What happens if the owner takes action against the squatters and tries to recover his house? We have several options and there are several routes for convicting landlords":
- Coercion offence, 172 of Spain's penal code , the classic example being when the owner of the flat cuts off all utilities to force out the squatters.
- Criminal offence of breaking and entering, 202 of the penal code : if the owner enters the occupied dwelling by force without a warrant, as long as it is the habitual residence of the squatters, it can be considered a criminal offence of breaking and entering on the part of the owner.
- Crime of threat and injury : this is the one that indicates that we can be exposed to if we come to blows in a conflict to recover the property, a somewhat extreme case but this can happen.
As indicated in his video, lawyer Miguel Ángel Mejías has several proposals that he believes should be put in place against the different types of squatting that he has explained, to improve what is currently happening:
- Immediate expulsion of squatters : "measures that allow law enforcement officers to evict in obvious cases of squatting."
- Register of rent defaulters : "to have a public register of people with money claims or pending legal proceedings in order to prevent squatting scams."
- Simplification of procedures : "reduce the legal time for precautionary measures to ensure efficient justice, in other words, to evict the squatter as a precautionary measure and then decide who is the owner. But not in seven months or seven years, but in a maximum of, for example, seven days."
The lawyer mentions other issues such as the case of the 'mediators', the hired help who vacate homes on behalf of property owners, or the problems of not doing things properly in this area, indicating that "if Spain were not a joke" there would be laws and measures to protect both owners and people who get onto the housing ladder , since, as he points out, "the right for everyone to have a roof over their heads is the sole responsibility of the state."
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