Squatters in Spain: what the law says in 2026, and what an owner actually does

The rules on squatting in Spain as they stand in September 2026, for someone who owns or is buying a home here. The Spanish word is okupación, and it covers two different offences with different police powers attached, which is where most of the confusion starts. This guide sets out what each offence is, why a holiday home counts as a dwelling in law, what decides whether the police can act on the spot, what changed in April 2025, what the 2026 eviction freeze does and does not cover, how often any of this actually happens, and what a sensible owner puts in place. Each point is taken from the law or the official protocol, linked where it appears.

Two offences, not one

The Spanish Penal Code treats entering someone’s home and occupying an empty building as separate things.

Entering a dwelling is article 202 of the Penal Code. Anyone who enters another person’s dwelling, or stays in it against the occupant’s will, faces six months to two years in prison. If it is done with violence or intimidation the range is one to four years plus a fine. This is the offence that applies to a home someone lives in, and, as the next section explains, to a holiday home.

Occupying a property that is not a dwelling is article 245.2 of the same code. Anyone who occupies, without due authorisation, a building or home that is not a dwelling, or stays in it against the owner’s will, faces a fine of three to six months. Spanish criminal fines are set as a daily amount over a period, so the penalty is money rather than prison. Where it is done with violence or intimidation, article 245.1 applies and the range is one to two years in prison.

The distinction matters because the first offence is a serious one against the privacy of a home, and the police have wide powers to act on it immediately. The second is a lesser offence against property, and outside a flagrant case the police need a court’s authority before they can clear the building.

A holiday home is a dwelling in law

The obvious question for anyone with a home on the Costa del Sol that they use for part of the year is which of the two offences applies to it. The answer is settled. The Ministry of the Interior’s protocol for the police on illegal occupation, Instrucción 6/2020, states that a home its owner uses at particular times of the year, at weekends or in the holidays, has the same legal protection as a main home, and that both are dwellings. It cites the Supreme Court’s judgment 852/2014 and the Prosecutor General’s own instruction of 2020, which says that second homes and seasonal homes are dwellings provided their legitimate occupants carry on their private life there, even occasionally.

What turns a building into a dwelling is use, not paperwork. A furnished apartment with clothes in the wardrobe and food in the cupboard that its owner visits four times a year is a dwelling. An empty flat that has been stripped and left for two years is much harder to present as one. That difference has a direct bearing on what the police can do, and it is worth keeping in mind when you decide how a home you are not living in should be kept.

There is no 48-hour rule

The idea that squatters cannot be removed once they have been inside for 48 hours is repeated so often that many people take it for law. It is not in any Spanish statute. The police protocol addresses it directly: because entering a dwelling is a continuing offence, whether it is flagrant is not to be tied to the passing of any time period.

What the police can do on their own authority turns on flagrancy, which the Criminal Procedure Act defines at article 795 as an offence that is being committed or has just been committed when the person is caught in the act, including someone found immediately afterwards with the tools or traces of it. The protocol gives the situations it has in mind for an occupation: officers see people going into a building with the belongings that suggest they mean to stay, neighbours or witnesses report people forcing a door or a window, an alarm company reports an intrusion signal, or a security guard or the building’s concierge reports that an occupation is happening at that moment.

In those cases, in a home that is a dwelling, the police identify the occupants, tell them the owner does not consent, record everything for the court, and can clear the home themselves. Where the property is not a dwelling and there is no flagrancy, the protocol is equally clear that the police cannot enter or clear it without a prior court order. They identify everyone, check whether the occupants have any contract or permission, and pass the file to the court.

For an owner, two practical points follow. An alarm connected to a monitoring centre is not only a deterrent but one of the specific triggers the protocol recognises for immediate police action. And reporting quickly, with proof of ownership and evidence that the home is used, is what puts a case on the fast side of that line.

What changed in April 2025: the fast-track court route

Organic Law 1/2025 on the efficiency of the justice system, in force since 3 April 2025, added both offences to the list of crimes tried under Spain’s fast-track criminal procedure, at article 795 of the Criminal Procedure Act. The fast-track procedure was designed for offences that are straightforward to prove. The investigation is handled by the duty court, and where the trial cannot be held on the day set the same law requires it to be held within the following fifteen days. Courts can also use their power to take first measures to protect the victim, at article 13 of the same act, to order the home handed back while the case runs, and the police protocol expressly provides for officers to request that.

Before this change a criminal complaint for occupation could sit in the ordinary system for many months. The point of the reform was to move these cases to a procedure measured in days and weeks. How quickly a particular court moves still varies, and a lawyer who works in the local courts will know what to expect, but the law now points firmly in the owner’s direction.

The civil route: five days to produce a title

There is a second route, in the civil courts, that has existed since 2018 and is often quicker in practice for an individual owner. Law 5/2018 amended the Civil Procedure Act so that a private individual who owns a home, or holds it under another lawful title, can bring a claim for immediate recovery of possession under article 250.1.4. The claim can be served on whoever is living in the home and on unknown occupants, and the person serving it can be accompanied by the police.

Under article 441.1 bis, if the owner asks for immediate delivery, the court’s order admitting the claim requires the occupants to produce, within five days, a title that justifies their being there. If they cannot, the court orders them out and the home handed back, provided the owner’s own title is sufficient, and there is no appeal against that order. This route was written for exactly the situation of a private owner whose home has been occupied, and it is the one most lawyers reach for first.

The eviction freeze has ended

Spain extended, year by year from 2020, a suspension of evictions for people in vulnerable situations. The last extension, Royal Decree-Law 2/2026 of 3 February 2026, would have run to 31 December 2026. Congress voted against it and repealed it on 26 February 2026. No suspension is in force, and evictions that were on hold can go ahead under the ordinary rules.

The freeze was widely misread as protecting squatters generally. It never did. Even while it applied, the measure for occupants without a title covered only homes that belonged to a company, or to an individual who owned more than ten homes, and only where the occupant was in a recognised situation of vulnerability. A private owner with one, two or five homes was outside it altogether.

What is in Parliament

A bill from the Partido Popular that would tighten the rules further was taken into consideration by Congress on 19 May 2026, which is the first step in the legislative process, not the last. It proposes that occupants be required to leave or produce a title within 24 hours, heavier penalties, a bar on occupants registering as residents at the address, and a rule that cutting off water or electricity to an occupied home cannot be treated as the offence of coercion. As of September 2026 it is at the amendment stage and is not law. I will update this page if it passes. Until then, the rules above are the ones that apply, and the fact that the bill proposes to protect an owner who cuts off the utilities tells you where the law stands on that today: do not do it.

How common it is

The Ministry of the Interior’s figures for 2025 record 14,875 cases of the two offences combined across Spain, 9.4% fewer than the 16,426 recorded in 2024. Almost 40% of them, 5,913, were in Catalonia. Andalucía recorded 1,909, down 13.5% on the year. Spain has about 26.6 million homes according to the 2021 census, so the national figure works out at roughly one case for every 1,800 homes in a year, and a good deal fewer than that outside Catalonia.

The figures do not separate occupied homes from empty ones, and the official commentary is that most reported cases concern property standing empty, much of it owned by banks and funds after the last crisis. A furnished apartment in an urbanisation with neighbours, a community and someone who checks on it is, on the evidence, a rare target. That is not a reason to do nothing. It is a reason to do the sensible things and then not lose sleep.

Tenants who stop paying are a different matter

A tenant who signed a contract and has stopped paying is not a squatter in law, however it feels. That is a civil matter, an eviction for non-payment through the ordinary tenancy procedure, and the rules on notice, arrears and the vulnerability freeze described above are the ones that apply. If you let a home, the protection is a proper written contract, checked references and a deposit lodged as the law requires. If you plan to let short term, the registration rules are in tourist licences in Andalucía.

What a sensible owner puts in place

For a home you will not be in all year:

• An alarm connected to a monitoring centre. It is the single measure that most directly changes what the police can do, because an intrusion signal reported by the alarm company is one of the recognised triggers for immediate action.
• Someone local who goes in. A property manager, a neighbour or a friend who visits regularly, collects post and can confirm to the police within the hour that nobody has permission to be there.
• A home that looks and is lived in. Furniture, linen, things in the cupboards. It is what makes the home a dwelling in law and it is what a court and a police officer look at.
• Your papers within reach. A copy of the deed and a recent nota simple, the land registry’s summary showing you as owner, saved where you can send them from anywhere in ten minutes.
• A lawyer you have already met. Ideally one who holds a power of attorney so that a complaint can be filed and a claim brought without you flying in.
• Insurance that names the risk. Ask your insurer for cover for illegal occupation, and read what it pays for and after what waiting period.

If it happens anyway: report it to the police at once, in person or through your lawyer, with the deed, the nota simple, and evidence the home is used. State clearly that the occupants do not have your consent. Do not change the locks while someone is inside, and do not cut the water or electricity, because either can itself be treated as an offence and can turn a clear case into a contested one. Let the lawyer choose between the criminal and the civil route on the facts.

Buying a home that has occupants

Some listings are offered cheaply with occupants in place. The price reflects that the buyer takes on the process of recovering the home, on a timetable the buyer does not control. On any purchase, the nota simple, the viewing and a conversation with the community’s administrator tell you whether anyone other than the seller is living there, and those checks are part of the five checks to make before you buy.

How I handle it

My approach is the same at every price point: proper research on the property and its area, a straight assessment of what it is genuinely worth, and careful negotiation on your behalf. On this subject that means checking who is in a home before you commit to it, saying plainly when a cheap listing is cheap for this reason, and introducing you to a lawyer, an alarm company and a property manager who will look after the home when you are not here. I am not a lawyer and do not act as one. What I can do is make sure the sensible things are in place before you take the keys, which is part of the buying service. To talk it through, book a call.

General guidance, not legal advice. The rules described are those of the Spanish Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Act as amended by Organic Law 1/2025, the Civil Procedure Act as amended by Law 5/2018, the repeal of Royal Decree-Law 2/2026 on 26 February 2026 and the Ministry of the Interior’s Instrucción 6/2020, all last checked against the official texts on 27 September 2026. If your home is occupied, take advice from a Spanish lawyer the same day.

Common questions