Although it is not expressly mentioned in the horizontal property law that the president is the one with the faculties to chair the meeting, this is commonly accepted in correspondence with the Spanish company law and other similar rules who deals with this kind of meetings.
Everybody will agree that to conduct properly a meeting it would be necessary to have some control, and It would be logical to think that the right person would be the president in the meeting.
The president will be in most of cases the community president but it is important to highlight that when he is not in the meeting, another person will have to take this post.
In the first place will be the vice-president, but in case he is also absent from the meeting, then the owners present or represented will be the one to elect the person that will act as president of the meeting, being the one who will chair the assembly and will sign later the minutes with the agreements taken.
Chairing the meeting means that the president need to take control of the proxies, need to control the people present in the meeting as invited, solicitors, translators or whatever, and finally need to take control of the order in which everybody could intervene, and all the rest of the measures to keep everything rightly.
In many cases it would be normal that the president delegate in the administrator to chair the meeting. Anyway the power will correspond to the president.
Having said this, many things should be control to have an efficient meeting, and one of them would be to control who is going to be allowed to be in the meeting.
Some of the comments and information shared in the meetings are quite confidential ( Who is a debtor; who is the owner of a property; who could be sued for not complying with the law or for causing nuisance to the rest of the owners, etc.).
This means that this should not be able to anyone, so it would be necessary to get a balance between the right of the owner to be assisted by someone else and the right of the rest of the owners to preserve their intimacy.
The president will be in the first place the right one to allow someone to be in the meeting, but supposing the majority of the owners think in a different way, this majority decision would have to be followed.
It would be normal for some owners to be accompanied by someone else but it would be important to check why. It would not be the same when a Russian people need to be in the meeting with an interpreter or when someone go with his solicitor, than the case in which the owner go to the meeting with a group of friends.
In addition, at the same time it is a right of the owner to express his oppion about the point discussed, it is also unfair the behaviour of many owners that want to be the only one talking in the meeting. The president would be entitled to control the time for everybody to express their opinion so that all the people could speak. It should not be allowed the manipulation of the meeting by one or a few owners frustrating the rights of the other owners to express their own ideas.
It would neither be reasonable to last in the meeting much more time than necessary just because some owners want to misuse their proper time, repeating the same arguments, talking about subjects out of the point, interrupting other speeches, etc.
The president should control this behaviour, without feeling intimidating or something. Neither should allow someone to read a letter given by an owner that has not been able to go to the meeting. It is in the meeting when this owner or his representative can say whatever, but not in writing, so unless the president or the majority of the meeting consider that this reading could be useful for the sake of the assembly, the president should no allow this.
If someone consider that the president or the majority of the meeting have frustrated his legimate rights, he will be entitle to go to court to contest the agreements approved in the meeting and the judge will have to decide. Vg. The Russian owner that was not allowed to be assisted in the meeting by his own translator; The owner who want to talk about a particular point and the president said no in an unreasonable way, etc.
A case would be different, so consider that the meeting should be productive, and take legal advice if you feel you have been unfairly damaged by the president´s decision.
Jose Luis Navarro.
Intercala´s solicitor and property administrator