What happens if your neighbours are causing a serious stench in your apartment building? Perhaps they make very smelly food, have stinky pets or some other foul smell is emanating from their flat. Find out what Spanish law says about it.
As most people live in apartment blocks in Spain, rather than houses or detached properties, issues with neighbours are common.
It’s usually a problem with noise either late night partying, a dog barking for hours on end, but smells can be an issue too.
Typically, smells will permeate the centres of buildings such as patios or stairwells, as people will often leave their windows open while cooking. People may smoke in stairwells too, or take their pets through them, leaving bad odours in their wake.
It’s not uncommon to come home in the middle of the day and come up your stairwell enveloped in stench of grilled sardines.
READ ALSO: What are my rights in Spain when it comes to noisy neighbours?
An even bigger problem though is when the smell enters your home, which can happen too. This is because the chimney flue is connected throughout the building and everyone’s extractor fans in their kitchens are joined to this central flue.
While extractor fans can be great, if everyone’s in the building is connected it can suck up smells from other people’s apartments and they can seep in through the fan in your kitchen.
Buildings in Spain often aren’t very well insulated either, especially if you live in the hotter parts of the country, as they’re designed for the heat. Unfortunately, this means that smells can sometimes drift from apartment to apartment, like a neighbour’s cigarette smoke for example.
So, what can you actually do about these smells and what does the law say about it?
The first step of course is to speak to your neighbour and to try and sort out the problem amicably. They’re probably not aware that their smells are affecting you so much.
They might agree to not smoke in their stairwell or only smoke on their balcony for example or maybe they promise not to cook strong smelling dishes like fish so often.
Of course this is very difficult to enforce though, and it might take several conversations or reminders. After several verbal conversations, you may want to send them an e-mail or a message so that you have a record of what’s happening and that you have spoken to them about the problem.
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If the problem persists though, you may have to resort to other measures.
In Spain, the Horizontal Property Law regulates rules in communal buildings and issues between neighbours.
In the case of unpleasant odours, they’re covered in Article 7.2 of this law, which addresses dangerous, harmful, annoying, unhealthy, or illegal activities.
It states:
“The owner and the occupant of the apartment or premises are not allowed to carry out activities prohibited in the statutes, which are harmful to the property, or which contravene the general provisions on annoying, unhealthy, harmful, dangerous or illegal activities.”
Unpleasant smells of course are considered annoying and some, like smoke can be harmful to health too.
READ ALSO: What to know about community of neighbours’ meetings in Spain
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The law goes to on say that the president of the community of owners, can request of any of the owners or occupants to immediately cease these activities and initiate the appropriate legal action.
This means that the next step if the problem continues would be to speak to the president of your building and let them know what’s going on.
If the offender persists, the president can call a meeting of the community of owners and get authorisation from the rest of them to start legal proceedings.
This would be in the form of a general lawsuit, which be filed against the owner and, where applicable, against the occupant of the dwelling or premises if it’s being rented.
Obviously, this is only likely to happen if the smell is annoying all neighbours or several in your building. It may be hard to get a majority approval for this if only you are affected. It can be equally difficult if the president of your building is the offender. In that case you will need to get other owners on your side.
If you do manage to file a lawsuit though and are successful, a court order should stop your neighbour from causing those problematic smells.
