Consolidated Text of the Land Act - Spain (Legislative Royal Decree 2/2008, 20th June 2008)

Description

The main new aspects of the Spanish Land Act include:

1. Land for subsidised housing:

• For the first time in a state law, a minimum of 30 percent of residential buildable area is reserved for subsidised housing (Article 10).
• According to article 47 of the Spanish constitution, it increases the participation of the community in the appreciations generated, establishing a general minimum of 5% and a maximum of 15% (Article 16).
• The law obliges the constitution of public patrimony of land, separated and consisting of the established land free of urbanisation costs. This land will be destined basically to building subsidised housing (Article 38).
• The new law forbids the adjudication of public land for subsidised housing at a price above the maximum value of the repercussion of the land on the relevant type of dwelling, according to its regulatory legislation (Article 39).

2. Transparency, public participation and legality controls on urban planning:

• All the instruments for spatial and urban planning ordering and undertaking as well as the agreements must be publicised for their approval (Article 11).
• The public administration will promote the electronic publication of the contents of the spatial and urban planning ordering instruments in force as well as the announcement of public information (Article 11).
• The agreements for planning, land exchanges and certain asset disposal must be approved by the municipal council. The councillors and municipal managers must make public declarations of their private goods and activities. Re-classifications that involve appreciations must identify the owners of the benefiting land over the last five years (Ninth Additional Provision).

3. Efficiency of markets and discouragement of speculation:

• The law proposes a new regime for valuations: the land must be valued according to its real situation and not according to urban development expectations, discouraging the practices of purely speculative classification and retention.

4. A more sustainable spatial and urban development considering the land as a scarce, non-renewable natural resource:

• Land for building must not be of residual class. Building may only take place on necessary and suitable land for cities, encouraging the rational use ofnatural resources (Article 2).
• To prevent unwanted impacts from new urban development, the plan must be revised overall when a urban planning action, either by itself or together with those approved in the last two years, involves an increase of greater than 20% of the population or of the land area built up in the municipality territorial area (Forth Transitory Provision).
• The instruments for spatial and urban planning ordering must be submitted to a prior environmental assessment. In new urban planning developments, there ports on water, coasts and roads must be a “determining” condition for the contents of the environmental report. On the other hand, the documentation of the instruments for ordering urban planning actions must include a report on thefinancial sustainability of the impact in the government departments of the building and the maintenance of infrastructures, and, finally, the environmental sustainability report must include or reference maps of natural risks in the area subject to the ordering (Article 15).
• Land in natural protected spaces and the Natura 2000 network may only be de-catalogued when the changes occurred on such spaces due to the scientifically proven natural evolution and after public information and with the authorisation of the European Commission (Article 13).

Publication date

29/5/2007