The highly-anticipated anti-squatter law was billed as a long-awaited fix for one of Spain’s most hated legal headaches.
Organic Law 1/2025 arrived with political fanfare earlier this year, promising swift justice that would empower property owners to boot out illegal occupiers.
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However, just a few months in, and it seems the reality is far from what was promised, with squatters already finding ways to manipulate the law to their favour.
The ’15-day eviction’
At the heart of the new law is a fast-track eviction process that vows to remove squatters within 15 days.
But, according to the legislation, this only works ‘if the squatting is clearly illegal and uncontested’.
According to a report by OK Diario, squatters now routinely produce documents that question this premise, in a bid to delay the process.
While some are laughable, others are very convincing. More importantly, most are enough to claim that there was a prior rental agreement between the occupier and landlord.
Under the law, any such document forces a judge to take a closer look. Suddenly, that ‘express’ eviction morphs into a standard judicial procedure that drags on for weeks, if not months.
There is reportedly an online network of squatters that helps them create fake contracts to show to the courts and cast doubt on claims that they are squatting illegally.
There’s no shortage of guides, forums, and backchannels where squatters can also learn the latest delay tactics and share how to outwit the system.
Courts are overwhelmed
None of this would matter quite so much if the courts could keep up. But in major cities like Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, they cannot.
Judges facing dozens of cases a day don’t have the time – or often the legal clarity – to act decisively under the new rules.
And it’s not just the squatters who are exploiting the system’s slowness. Legal ambiguity, inconsistent interpretations, and bureaucratic bottlenecks mean even the most airtight cases can stall.
‘Inquiokupas’ are not addressed by new laws
Perhaps the most glaring omission in the legislation is its failure to address so-called inquiokupas.
These are tenants who enter homes legally with a rental contract but then stop paying and refuse to leave.
Since they’re not technically squatters, they’re not covered by the express eviction mechanism. They remain the landlords’ problem – and a growing one at that.
For small property owners, especially those relying on rental income, this is more than a legal nuisance, it’s financial ruin.
These cases still follow the old legal route, a slow, expensive process that can stretch on for years.
