The Spanish Land Registry online

We have received the results of the land registry checks that our abogado (lawyer) in Spain has made on the plot we want to buy. I am impressed. The time to get the information was less than a week, and the land registry for the whole of Spain is on-line, with basic information available free of charge and without any formalities being completed first. The above screen-shot is part of the free information about the plot we intend to buy.

We still need confirmation that the plot is building land with no major restrictions on what we put on it, this has to come from the local authorities in Xàtiva, so we haven’t completed the initial enquiries yet.

There is a free mash-up which the Catastro Español (Spanish National Land Registry) provides, which allows you to see exactly where the plot is, superimposed on a satellite image of the area.

For 30 Euro (for 3 month’s access) you can also get much more information about the plot, but that is what the lawyer has already sent us, so we have decided not to pay for the privilege of duplicating his work.

Normally, the Spanish are not big internet users – we noticed that some quite large businesses don’t yet have a home page; a local builder we spoke to when we there a couple of weeks ago didn’t even have an e-mail address. But as far as I am aware, the Catastro Español is quite a way ahead of their German equivalent. Here you can get information on-line in Bayern (Bavaria) and Nordrhein-Westfalen (maybe in other regions, but I haven’t found them if that is the case), but it costs 8 Euro a time, you have to fill in a multi-page form to apply for access first (application fee: 50 Euro), and it does not include the possibility to make mash-ups combining the land registry plans with satellite images.