The tenant stops paying: eviction for unpaid rent in Spain in 2026, step by step

The rent for a flat in Costa Adeje stopped arriving in June. The tenant answers messages with promises, the deposit covers one month, and the owner, who lives in Manchester, has read in the same week that evictions were suspended until 2030 and that they were not. Both headlines were true for one day, and since 8 October 2026 the first is true again, under a decree-law that still awaits its vote. This note sets out the eviction for unpaid rent as the Civil Procedure Act reads on the day we write it, after the repeal of the October decrees, after the new decree-law of 6 October and after a Constitutional Court judgment that removed two of the hurdles the Housing Act had added: what the landlord must do before the claim, what the claim must contain, what the tenant can do in the ten days that follow, when the file stops for social services, when the court must decide, and how long a Canary court actually takes.

Before the claim: the demand for payment and the negotiation the law now requires

Two letters precede the claim, and they are not the same letter. The first is the demand for payment. A tenant may stop an eviction once by paying everything owed, an act the law calls enervación, but not if the landlord hubiese requerido de pago al arrendatario por cualquier medio fehaciente con, al menos, treinta días de antelación a la presentación de la demanda y el pago no se hubiese efectuado al tiempo de dicha presentación, had demanded payment from the tenant by any reliable means at least thirty days before the claim was filed and the payment had not been made by then (Ley 1/2000, article 22.4). A burofax with certified content and acknowledgment of receipt is the usual means; an ordinary e-mail, which proves neither receipt nor content, is not. The demand that states the amounts owed and gives the tenant thirty days takes away the tenant's right to stop the eviction by paying at the last moment. It need not warn that the lease will end or that the chance to pay will be lost: the Supreme Court has said that the law does not make the landlord the tenant's adviser, and the Audiencia of Las Palmas applied it in June 2025 to a flat in Corralejo whose tenant had received a burofax in June 2024 and the claim in July, and paid in November, too late to keep the lease. The claim must say what the letter did: a claim for unpaid rent is not admitted si el arrendador no indicare las circunstancias concurrentes que puedan permitir o no, en el caso concreto, la enervación del desahucio, if the landlord does not state the circumstances that allow or exclude enervación in the case at hand (article 439.3).

The second letter is new. Since 3 April 2025 a civil claim is admitted only if the claimant first tried what the law calls a medio adecuado de solución de controversias, an adequate means of dispute resolution, and the eviction for unpaid rent is not among the exceptions: the requirement applies en todos los procesos declarativos del libro II of the Act, in every declaratory process of Book II, and the list of matters excused names fundamental rights, children, incapacity, the summary possession actions and the cheque and bill procedure, not the landlord's claim (Ley Orgánica 1/2025, article 5). The attempt can be a negotiation between the parties or their lawyers, a mediation, a conciliation or a confidential binding offer. It is proved with a document signed by both sides or, failing that, mediante cualquier documento que pruebe que la otra parte ha recibido la solicitud o invitación para negociar o, en su caso, la propuesta, en qué fecha, y que ha podido acceder a su contenido íntegro, by any document proving that the other side received the request or invitation to negotiate, or the proposal, on what date, and could read its full content; the attempt is over without agreement when thirty calendar days pass from receipt without a meeting or a written answer (article 10). In practice one letter can do both jobs: a reliable demand that states the debt, proposes a way to settle it and gives the tenant thirty days satisfies article 22.4 of the Civil Procedure Act and, if nobody answers, article 10 of the organic law. The courts read that letter for its content and its dates. In Madrid a claim was first rejected because the landlord's burofax was taken for a bare demand for payment, and admitted on appeal in September 2026 because the letter also offered mediation and thirty days to accept it, although the tenant had refused the burofax; in Barcelona a claim filed before the month from a binding offer had run was rejected in September 2026, because the day that counts is the day the claim is filed. The clock on the debt stops while the negotiation is open (article 7), which matters for the oldest months; how the requirement works in every civil claim is in our note on suing in Spain after the 2025 reform.

The claim, and what the court looks at before admitting it

The eviction for unpaid rent is a verbal trial, the short civil procedure, and the claim may ask for two things at once: the end of the lease with the return of the flat, and the payment of the rent and sums owed, whatever the amount (Ley 1/2000, articles 250.1 and 437.4). It may add a third: the landlord podrá anunciar en ella que asume el compromiso de condonar al arrendatario todo o parte de la deuda y de las costas, may announce in the claim that it undertakes to forgive the tenant all or part of the debt and the costs, on condition that the tenant leaves voluntarily within a period the landlord sets, never shorter than fifteen days from the notification (article 437.3). For an owner who wants the keys more than the arrears, that line is the fastest route in the whole procedure, and the acceptance of the offer counts as the tenant's surrender.

Two statements decide what happens next, and the Housing Act of 2023 wrote them into the admission of every claim that seeks possession of a home. The claim must say Si el inmueble objeto de las mismas constituye vivienda habitual de la persona ocupante, whether the property is the occupant's habitual residence, and whether the claimant is a large holder of housing under article 3.k of Ley 12/2023; a claimant who says it is not must attach a Land Registry certificate listing its properties (article 439.6). A large holder is la persona física o jurídica que sea titular de más de diez inmuebles urbanos de uso residencial o una superficie construida de más de 1.500 m2 de uso residencial, excluyendo en todo caso garajes y trasteros, the natural or legal person holding more than ten urban residential properties or more than 1,500 square metres of residential floor area, garages and storerooms excluded, a threshold a community may lower to five in a stressed area it has declared (Ley 12/2023, article 3.k); no Canary municipality has been declared one. The owner of one or three flats is not a large holder, and the certificate that proves it is one of the papers to order before the claim.

Two further hurdles existed for large holders and no longer do. The Housing Act required a large holder suing over a habitual residence to document whether the tenant was economically vulnerable, with a certificate from the social services, and, if the tenant was, to prove that it had first gone through a conciliation or mediation procedure run by the regional administration. The Constitutional Court struck both out on 29 January 2025 as a disproportionate barrier to the right to a judge: the vulnerability certificate was una carga acreditativa desmesurada, an excessive burden of proof on the claimant, when the same fact could be learnt through the public services themselves (Sentencia 26/2025, on articles 439.6.c and 439.7). The judgment was published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 28 February 2025, and a reader of the consolidated Act should know that its text, re-set after a later reform, still prints the two paragraphs in full; they are null. What remains for every landlord is the duty to say whether the flat is the tenant's home and whether the landlord is a large holder, and for every court the duty to call the social services, which comes next.

The ten days: pay, leave, oppose or do nothing

Once the claim is admitted, the court clerk serves the tenant with a requirement that fixes the rest of the calendar. The tenant has ten days to do one of four things: desaloje el inmueble, pague al actor o, en caso de pretender la enervación, pague la totalidad de lo que deba o ponga a disposición de aquel en el tribunal o notarialmente el importe de las cantidades reclamadas en la demanda y el de las que adeude en el momento de dicho pago enervador del desahucio; o en otro caso comparezca ante éste y alegue sucintamente, formulando oposición, las razones por las que, a su entender, no debe, en todo o en parte, la cantidad reclamada o las circunstancias relativas a la procedencia de la enervación, vacate the property, pay the claimant or, to stop the eviction, pay everything owed or deposit with the court or a notary the sums claimed and those fallen due since, or else appear and state briefly, in opposition, why the sum is not owed in whole or in part or why enervación applies (Ley 1/2000, article 438.5). The requirement already states the day and hour of the hearing if the tenant opposes and el día y la hora exactos para la práctica del lanzamiento en caso de que no hubiera oposición, the exact day and hour of the eviction if there is no opposition, and it warns the tenant that silence means consent to the end of the lease.

Each of the four roads ends differently. If the tenant does nothing, the clerk closes the trial by decree and the eviction takes place on the day already fixed, with the costs and the rent accrued up to the handover added to the sum. If the tenant leaves without paying, the decree ends the eviction and the landlord asks for enforcement of the money with a simple request. If the tenant pays everything, the eviction is stopped, once: a tenant who already stopped one eviction cannot do it again, and neither can one who was reliably asked to pay thirty days before the claim (article 22.4); the decree that declares the action stopped charges the tenant with the costs (article 22.5). If the tenant opposes, the hearing is held on the day set, and how wide the defence is depends on what the claim asked for. A claim that asks only for the flat is a summary trial: sólo se permitirá al demandado alegar y probar el pago o las circunstancias relativas a la procedencia de la enervación, the defendant may only allege and prove payment or the circumstances of enervación (article 444.1); its judgment can be reopened in an ordinary trial, and a tenant who, once served, says the flat is now theirs under an option to buy does not stop it: the Supreme Court sent that dispute to the ordinary trial in June 2026 and upheld the eviction of a tenant who had paid nothing since 2014. A claim that also asks for the rent, the usual one, is a full trial: the Supreme Court held in June 2023 that the tenant may then dispute the debt itself on any ground, and that the judgment is final on it. The judgment, if the tenant does not appeal, is executed on the day fixed in the order that recorded the opposition, which deberá verificarse antes de treinta días desde la fecha señalada para la vista, must take place within thirty days of the hearing date, without further notice (article 438.6); the request for enforcement made in the claim itself is enough (article 549.3).

Where the file stops: the social services

Whenever the flat is the tenant's habitual residence, the court does something the landlord cannot prevent: in the decree admitting the claim it tells the tenant how to reach the regional and local social services, and se comunicará inmediatamente y de oficio por el Juzgado la existencia del procedimiento a las Administraciones autonómicas y locales competentes, the court itself immediately informs the competent regional and local administrations of the procedure, so that they can assess the household's vulnerability and, if they find it, propose a social rental alternative, immediate measures or aid (article 441.5). The administration has ten days to confirm vulnerability; the parties then have five days to say what they want, and the court decides by order whether to suspend the process so that the measures can be taken, durante un plazo máximo de suspensión de dos meses si el demandante es una persona física o de cuatro meses si se trata de una persona jurídica, for a maximum of two months if the claimant is a natural person and four months if it is a legal entity; when the measures are adopted or the period ends, the suspension lifts by itself and the procedure continues (article 441.6). The court weighs both sides, the landlord's own vulnerability included, and the Act gives it a yardstick: a household whose rent plus electricity, gas, water and telecommunications exceeds 30 per cent of its income, with income below three times the monthly IPREM, raised for children, elderly or dependent members and up to five times the IPREM where a member is disabled or dependent (article 441.7). An owner who sues through a company is suing with a four-month pause written into the law; an individual with a two-month one.

The extraordinary suspension that the pandemic decree created is over. Real Decreto-ley 11/2020 let a vulnerable tenant without an alternative ask the court to halt the eviction, and the Act today says those measures dejarán de surtir efecto el 31 de diciembre de 2025, cease to have effect on 31 December 2025 (article 1.1). Two decrees tried to push that date to 31 December 2026 and both were repealed by the Congress: Real Decreto-ley 16/2025 on 28 January 2026 and Real Decreto-ley 2/2026 on 28 February 2026. Since then, and until 7 October 2026, the two-month and four-month pause of article 441.6 was the only suspension a court could grant in an eviction for unpaid rent, triggered by the social services' proposal, not by the tenant's request; what the decree-law of 6 October adds, pending its vote, is in the next section.

What the October decrees would have changed, and what the decree-law of 6 October brings back

For one day, 1 October 2026, the law read differently. Real Decreto-ley 26/2026 suspended until 31 December 2030 the evictions of vulnerable tenants without an alternative brought by investment entities, sent every other landlord's claim against a vulnerable tenant to the regional administration for a report on the resources available, and added a paragraph to article 22 under which the administration, if it offered no housing alternative within two months, estará obligada a enervar la acción mediante el pago al arrendador o la consignación judicial de la totalidad de las cantidades reclamadas, was obliged to stop the action by paying the landlord or depositing with the court the whole sum claimed (article 5.2). The Congress repealed the decree on 2 October, and for a few days the consolidated Act carried the note that the new paragraph was left without effect. On 8 October 2026 Real Decreto-ley 29/2026, published the day before, wrote the rules again. In an eviction for unpaid rent the one that counts is the new paragraph 6 of article 22: once the tenant's economic vulnerability is proved, the administration is told at once and has two months, during which the case and any eviction stop, to offer the tenant another home or else to pay the landlord, or deposit with the court, everything claimed and accrued up to that day with the costs; if it does neither, it takes the tenant's place as debtor, there is no eviction, and the lease runs on while the vulnerability lasts (article 5.2 of the decree-law). This enervación is extra: it does not count as the tenant's own one-time payment under article 22.4 and works even after the reliable demand. The suspension until 31 December 2030 is written again too, for claims brought by investment entities (article 2.1), and the suspension at the regional administration's report, for other claims, only where the new paragraph does not apply (article 2.2); both reach proceedings already running where no eviction has yet been carried out (second transitional provision). The decree-law must be convalidated or repealed by the Permanent Deputation of the dissolved Congress within thirty days of its publication on 7 October, and nothing had been published by 21 October. What the decrees did to rents, extensions and temporary lets, and what the new decree-law brings back there, is in our note on the rental decree of October 2026; the seasonal contract is in winter lets and the seasonal contract.

How long it takes in the Canaries

The Act sets short clocks: ten days for the tenant to answer the requirement, a hearing within a month of the citation, an eviction within thirty days of the hearing. The courts set the long ones. The General Council of the Judiciary publishes each spring an estimate of the average duration of the cases every kind of court closed the year before, and its sheet for rental verbal trials gives the Canary Islands 11.4 months for 2025, against 9.2 for Spain as a whole; the same figure was 5.1 months in 2019. The Council's own caveat is that the estimate serves comparison between territories and never predicts the duration of a particular case, and the eviction of a tenant who opposes, asks for legal aid and is reported vulnerable sits at the long end of it. The enforcement of the money, once the flat is back, is slower still: the same sheets give 49 months for the enforcement of judicial titles in the islands in 2025. An owner who wants the flat soon forgives the debt in the claim and takes the keys; an owner who wants the money sues for it and waits, and the tools for that second road, the monitorio among them, are in our note on recovering an unpaid debt in Spain.

What our team does

We write the demand for payment so that it serves as the negotiation the organic law requires and closes the door to a last-minute enervación, order the Land Registry certificate that proves you are not a large holder, draft the claim with the forgiveness offer where the keys matter more than the arrears, attend the hearing, and follow the enforcement of the rent. Tenancy disputes and eviction proceedings are part of our litigation practice, from the Costa Adeje and Corralejo offices and by video; every case is assessed first, and the plan and the fee are agreed in a paid consultation before any work begins. Tell us the date of the last payment, send the contract and the messages, and book a consultation.

Common questions

My tenant owes two months. Can I change the locks?

No. The only lawful way to recover the flat from a tenant who does not leave is the court's decree or judgment and the eviction it fixes; an owner who, para realizar un derecho propio, actuando fuera de las vías legales, empleare violencia, intimidación o fuerza en las cosas, to enforce a right of their own and outside the legal channels uses violence, intimidation or force on things, commits an offence punished with a fine of six to twelve months (Código Penal, article 455). The first step is a reliable demand for payment with thirty days, which also closes the tenant's right to stop the eviction by paying later.

Do I have to attempt a negotiation before suing?

Yes, since 3 April 2025: a claim without a prior attempt at an adequate means of dispute resolution is not admitted, and evictions are not among the exceptions. A reliable letter that states the debt, proposes a settlement and gives thirty days satisfies it if the tenant does not answer.

I own one flat. Do the large-holder rules apply to me?

No. A large holder owns more than ten residential properties or more than 1,500 square metres of them; your claim still has to say that you are not one, with a Land Registry certificate listing your properties. The documents on the tenant's vulnerability and the prior conciliation that the Housing Act asked of large holders were annulled by the Constitutional Court in January 2025.

Can the tenant stop the eviction by paying at the last moment?

Once, by paying everything owed within the ten days of the requirement, unless you demanded payment reliably at least thirty days before the claim and it was not paid, or the tenant already stopped an eviction before. The demand letter is what takes that card away.

The tenant is a family with children. Will the court stop the eviction?

The court must inform the social services whenever the flat is the tenant's home, and may suspend the process for up to two months if you sue as an individual, four if a company sues, so that the administration proposes an alternative; then the procedure continues. The extraordinary suspension of the pandemic years ended on 31 December 2025, and the two decrees that tried to extend it in 2026 were repealed. Since 8 October 2026 a new decree-law, pending its vote, adds another pause when the tenant is economically vulnerable: the administration has two months to offer a home or to pay you what is owed, and if it does neither it takes the tenant's place as debtor and the eviction does not take place.

General information on the law as it stands in October 2026 (Ley 1/2000, articles 22, 250, 437, 438, 439, 441, 444 and 549, in the text in force since 2 October 2026 and with the annulment of articles 439.6.c and 439.7 by Sentencia del Tribunal Constitucional 26/2025 of 29 January; Ley 12/2023, article 3.k; Ley Orgánica 1/2025, articles 5, 7 and 10; Real Decreto-ley 11/2020, article 1; Real Decreto-ley 26/2026, article 5, repealed on 2 October 2026; Real Decreto-ley 29/2026, articles 2 and 5 and second transitional provision, in force from 8 October 2026 and awaiting convalidation on 21 October 2026; Código Penal, article 455; Sentencias del Tribunal Supremo 194/2021, 966/2023 and 1039/2026; Audiencia Provincial de Las Palmas, sentencia 376/2025; Audiencias Provinciales de Madrid and Barcelona, autos 391/2026 and 302/2026; the General Council of the Judiciary's estimate of average durations, edition of 16 April 2026). It is not advice on a particular case: the contract, the dates of the letters and the tenant's situation decide what applies to yours.