You can do everything properly, carefully and legally when you’re buying property or land in Spain and still get caught out big time. Even the local Town Hall can be in the dark about this particular nightmare: it’s called a Vía Pecuaria. In the UK they’re called Drovers’ Roads or Green Lanes, ancient rights of way hundreds and sometimes thousands of years old, formerly used to drive livestock from A to B. In Great Britain they’re well documented and often sign-posted – in Spain they’re not.
And as there are 100,000 kilometres (62,500 miles) of these things, wherever you buy there’s a very good chance that there’s one nearby, and an equally good chance that no one knows about it except some bureaucrat miles away in the Regional Government.
When a friend bought land to build on she was determined to do everything above board, to the letter, and absolutely legally. She sourced her professional advisors very carefully, based on recommendation, and where possible, eg the builder, by seeing work they had already done. So far so good. She now had:
- a Lawyer
- an Architect
- a Land Surveyor
- a Builder
She delivered the Project Plans (proyecto) to the Town Hall herself, and on the Mayor’s personal go-ahead, the build started.
After nearly a year the house was finished and she moved in. One day about a month later a little white Suzuki Jeep with official-looking green signs on the doors pulled up at the gates. Two brown-uniformed officals got out, introduced themselves as being from the Department of the Environment (Consejería de Medio Ambiente), and asked if there’d been any trouble with the neighbours recently. That got her thinking, because as it happens, there had been a disagreement about a boundary. This however was not the reason these guys were there; what they were doing was investigating the route of a Vía Pecuaria (VP), and it looked like her brand-spanking-new house was slap bang in the middle of it!
Because she had nothing to hide she invited them in, and when they asked if they could measure the external dimensions of the house and take some photos, she said yes. Why not? As far as she was concerned everything was above board, she had followed procedures to the letter and had nothing to worry about.
3 months later an official letter arrived, recorded delivery, informing her that, according to the records, she had indeed built on a VP, and giving her just 30 days to respond. (This is normal practice , and in fact 30 days is quite generous, it can be as few as 10.)
Just to recap: no-one had picked up this VP issue; not the solicitor, not the surveyor, not the architect. Not even the Town Hall through whose patch the VP runs! The authorities in the regional capital had also approved the project plan,which included a detailed map of the location of the house!
Nor is there any mention of it in theProperty Registry, or the Property Tax Registry! It’s not even visible on the aerial photos on the Ministry of Agriculture website. What chance has anyone got?
Anyway, without further ado she dispatched her lawyer to talk to the authorities. The lawyer came back having had a meeting with a very reasonable and understanding official. The upshot was that my friend had two choices:
a) do nothing, and not know when, or if, theEnvironment Department would act; or
b) ask them to survey and mark out on theground exactly where the boundaries of theVP are.
And as her lawyer very reasonably pointed out it wouldn’t make sense just to do the 50 or so metres next to her house; they’d have to survey the whole length of the VP. That’s where things stand now, nearly 9 months after the meeting.
The good news is they probably won’t demolish the house because there she has an official project in the pipeline. The bad news is that she can’t legalise her house-build until the VP issue is sorted out. The ugly news is that she could be faced with a fine of between €30,000 and €150,000.Ouch!.
How to avoid this? Well, obviously, you need to ask the specific question of your lawyer, estate agent, surveyor, architect; “Please confirm there are no rights of way through my land”. They are called variously cañadas, cañadas reales, cordeles, veredas, and a host of other regional variants.
You can do some of the checking-up yourself; there are maps available, similar to UK Ordnance Survey, called Mapa Topográfico Nacional de España on which VPs are marked. You can get these, or order them, in bookshops.
You can also try searching the websites of the regional governments. For instance the province of Granada has all its VPs marked on it (see Websites).
What you can’t do is ignore them; they’re a serious obstacle.
If you’re already in the middle of a VP problem, don’t panic. VP’s have different widths, different classifications, and different priorities.
The higher the priority the more trouble you’re in if you’ve builton one. Unfortunately the two most critical legal issues are
- land on a VP cannot be bought or sold, and
- there is no statute of limitations, ie there is no time limit: this applies FOREVER.