Coastal Law

Dear Sirs,

About a year ago, I bought a property which was situated right next to the sea and for which I paid a lot of money due to its magnificent situation. We signed for the property at the Notary’s Office and were represented by a lawyer and therefore we though that nothing could go wrong. From what has been explained to me, the previous owners, who were locals, had a large plot of land from which the plot of land that was sold to me was segregated.  Thinking that everything was correctly sorted out, I was surprised to receive a letter from my lawyer in which he advised that the whole title to the property could not be registered in the Land Registry Office due to the fact that part of the property is on public land and we would only be able to register the part of the land that did not invade the so called “public domain”.

How has it been possible for someone to sell me this land, part of which is supposedly public land? What can I do?

Dear Reader,

Thank you for your letter. The destruction of the Spanish coast has been a notorious fact of life over the last twenty years and gave rise to a legislative initiative to try and resolve the matter. With this aim in mind, a so called “Law of Coasts” was published on the 28th July 1988 with the purpose of regulating the determination, the protection and the use of the so called terrestrial – maritime boundary and ultimately aiming to guarantee its integrity and adequate conservation.  

This Law establishes a protected area of land, which includes the first one hundred metres set back from the coastline. This area can be extended as a result of the intervention of the State, the Autonomous Community or the local Town Hall by another one hundred metres in accordance with the particular characteristics of the coastline and to ensure its effective protection.

Within the protected area, it is prohibited amongst other practices to build any residential construction, roads connecting towns, to erect high tension electricity cables, or to dump rubbish and untreated sewage. At the same time, the law guarantees other measures to ensure the freedom of public access to the coastline and only permits the occupation of the so called public domain bordering the coastline in a series of cases in which the nature of the activity does not permit the installations being situated in a different place.     

Therefore the problem which you face is a complex issue. If the Land Registry does not make a mention of the fact that the land is part of the so called public domain, there is no way of knowing about the problem prior to the purchase as the purpose of the land registry is to give public information about the ownership of the property and the limitations of the right of ownership, whether this be a charge or encumbrance, amongst which would be the so called classification of the land as part of the public domain. Therefore, from what you say, the refusal of the registrar to register the title that you have purchased as a segregated plot may be a consequence of the fact that the Land Registry has become aware of the fact that the land is partially affected by the area of public domain due to the modification of the title by segregation.

If this were the case, the only potential solution to the problem would be to accredit the fact that the dwelling that exists on the land segregated and sold to you already existed prior to the entering into force of the Law of Coasts. To substantiate the age of the property in this case, it would probably be necessary to obtain information from the records of the “Catastro”, as the mere sworn oaths of the vendors or other witnesses or an architect’s certificate giving the age of the construction would probably not be sufficient. With regard to the inscription of all of the land, this would probably be very difficult to achieve although on the basis of the information provided we cannot say anything for sure.

Article courtesy of Fernando Aliaga, Abogados Javea