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 resemblance with the Spanish corporate law and other similar rules that deal with this kind of meetings.
Everybody will agree that to carry out a meeting properly it would be necessary to have some control, and it would be logical to think that the right person would be the president of the Community.
The president of the meeting will be in most cases the community’s president but it is important to highlight that when he/she is not in the meeting, another person will have to take this post.
In the first place it will be the vice-president, but in case he/she is also absent from the meeting, then the owners present or represented will be the ones to elect the person that will act as president of the meeting, being that person the one who will chair the assembly and will later sign the minutes with the agreements taken.
Chairing the meeting means that the president must take control of the proxies, must control the people present in the meeting as like those invited, solicitors, translators or whatever, and finally must take control of the order in which everybody can intervene, and all the rest of the measures to keep everything right.
In many cases it would be normal for the president to delegate in the administrator to chair the meeting. However, the final responsibility lies with the president.
Having said this, many things should be controlled in order 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 inconvenience to the rest of the owners, etc.).
This means that not everyone can attend, 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 privacy.
The president will be in the first place the 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 person needs to be in the meeting with an interpreter or when someone goes with his solicitor, than the case in which the owner goes to the meeting with a group of friends.
In addition, being at the same time a right of the owner to express his/her opinion about the item discussed, it is also unfair the behaviour of many owners that want to be the only ones talking in the meeting. The president would be entitled to control the speaking time so that everyone can express their opinion and everyone gets a turn to speak. The monopolization of the meeting by one or a few owners frustrating the rights of the other owners to express their own ideas should not be allowed
It would neither be reasonable for the meeting to last much more time than necessary just because some owners want to misuse their speaking time, repeating the same arguments, talking about subjects out of place, interrupting other speeches, etc.
The president should control this behaviour, without feeling intimidated or anything. Neither should he /she 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/her representative can say whatever they deem appropriate, but not in writing, so unless the president or the majority of the meeting consider that the reading of this letter could be useful for meeting, the president should no allow this.
If someone considers that the president or the majority of the meeting have frustrated his/her legal rights, he/she will be entitled to go to court to challenge the agreements approved in the meeting and the judge will have to decide. Ex. The Russian owner that was not allowed to be assisted in the meeting by his own translator; The owner who wanted to talk about a particular point and the president said no in an unreasonable way, etc.
Each case is 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.