Thousands of community´s apartments are owned by foreigners that only use them for summer holidays to enjoy a time of relax in their apartments, while others use this time in Spain to make conservation works or just some innovations in their properties.

            As you may imagine both possibilities are clearly in contradiction and it should be managed by some rules.

            First of all, for any works you need the licence from the Town Hall, but in addition to this, as we have said before in previous articles, any works that could affect the aesthetic exterior, undermine the overall safety, general structure of the building or prejudice the rights of another owner, cannot be made without the prior permission of the community, so you may also need the approval of yours works in a general assembly of the community.

As you may imagine, the community could let you make the works only in a certain period of time or within a fix timetable. This kind of agreements to approve the works only under the condition to make it out of unpleasant time, could be use as a very effective tool to coincile the interest and rights of all the owners in the community.

Apart from this, the Town Hall bylaws regulate the allowed time to do works, trying to preserve the right to relax of the rest of the owners. Every Town Hall has different rules that it can be checked in their own web pages or asked to their building department. Many Town Hall´s bylaws say that building works can not be made before 9:00 in the morning or after 20:00 in the evenings

When the works to be made do not need the prior approval of the general assembly in the community or no conditions or timetable have not been approved by the community, bylaws become the only effective measure to keep some peacefulness in the community at certain hours.

In case, someone is making noise works out of time, you would be perfectly entitle to call the police and the owner could be fined for breaching the bylaws.

I hope common sense and some respect to the neighbours should be enough to make possible doing the works and keep the necessary relax in the community, but it is always important to know what can be done in case someone is doing what he wants.