As you all may know, the minutes of the General Assemblies should be written in an official book, properly registered, but not many people are aware that in these minutes there is no need to include all the comments of the people in the meeting, or the letters or documents someone wants the administrator to include in the minutes.

          In fact the minutes are just to reflect the proposals that, according to the agenda of the meeting, have been passed or rejected by the General Assembly, specifying how this agreement has been taken.

          The Horizontal Property Law establishes in its clause 19.2 that:

2. Minutes from each meeting should express, at least, the following circumstances: 

a) Date and holding place. 

b) Who has called the meeting and, in its case, proprietors who have promoted it. 

c) Its ordinary or extraordinary character and the information about its holding in first or second call. 

d) Attendants’ list and their respective positions, as well as represented proprietors, with indication, in any case, of their participation quotas. 

e) Agenda of the meeting. 

f) The agreements taken, with a list of the names from proprietors who had voted for and against them, as well as participation quotas which they respectively represent, provided it were relevant for the validity of the agreement. 

          Apart from these circumstances, the administrator is not obliged to write down in the minutes anything else, though it is quite normal for the administrator to mention the main comments that has lead to the final decision as a way to make everybody to understand more precisely what have been approved or rejected.

          However, it would not be normal to relate the whole comments expressed in the meeting by the attendants or to include in the minute the emails or letters that some of the owner who do not go to the meeting send previously to the administration asking for its inclusion in the minute.

          Should you record everything in the minutes, quite probably its extension would be enormous and you would need a minute book for every meeting, which is not the idea of the minute.

          Some attendant can ask for authorization or propose to the president to record the meeting and this could be valid in future supposing there is a court case to resolve a refutation of any agreement passed, but this record would be apart from the minute.

Sometimes an owner wants a notary to take the minutes of the meeting and the meeting can authorize the notary to be in to take notes, but the official minutes of the meeting will be the one signed by the administrator and the president.

          According to the HPL the minutes should be signed by the president and the administrator who are holding these post at the beginning of the meeting ( no matter if any or both of them are removed in this meeting and it is named another one).

          In the point nº 3 of the previously said article 19 of the HPL it is mentioned that:

“ Minutes defects or mistakes will be amended if it expresses unequivocally the date and holding place, the attending proprietors, present or represented, and determined agreements, with indication of for and against votes, as well as the participation quotas they respectively hold, and it is signed by the President and the Secretary. This correction should be made before the following meeting when the correction will be ratified.” 

          Anyway, it is always advisable to propose for approval in the following meeting of the community the minutes of the previous one so that the owner could have the possibility to amend whatever.