Everybody could think that the administrator works for the owners, so they are entitle to ask for any information they want to know regarding the community. However, the legal situation is not that way.

            First of all, it should be clear that the administrator does not work for the owners but for the community itself, so he only have to follow the instructions of the community given by the General Assembly.

The president is the represent of the community and has the faculty and also the obligation to comply and execute the agreements approved in General Assembly and, in the same way, the administrator should comply with the agreements of the General Assembly or the instructions of the president when these instructions are in agreement with the decisions taken in the General meeting.

The obligation of the administrator is not to follow the instructions of particular owners on issues that has not been previously approved in the General Assembly.

It is the General Assembly or the president the one to decide the information that can be provided to the individual owners and the way to do it. The documents and information of the community is at the disposal of the General Assembly but not the individual owners who unilaterally decide to request it.

The reasons to deny copies of documents or to prepare a report with the information requested by the owners are clear: a) Should the administrator have to give all the copies of the documents and information required by any individual owner there will be no time to work on behalf of the community itself. There would be no obligation for the administrator to prepare any report or answer to particular owners about any community issue just because an owner want to be informed about it; b) Every year the accounts of the community should be approved by the General Assembly so there is no obligation for the administration to give to a particular owner any information that have been discussed and approved in a previous General Assembly; c) The administrator has to respect the Data Protection Law, so most of the information and documents are at the disposal of the president or the people decide by the General Assembly but not to the rest of the owners; etc.

I know that the right of information for particular owners will depend on the agreements the community may has reached with the administrator, but in most of cases there is no specification about any compromise for the administrator to assume the obligation to follow the instructions of particular owners and to provide them with copies of documents or preparing reports about whatever issue they want to know in detail.

Spanish Courts have been many times resolving about what we could consider as “ the right of information of the owners” and there are plenty of court sentences in which it has been decided that the owners only can take the information through the General Assembly.

I am perfectly aware that this interpretation is not very pleasant for individual owners and, in some cases, it could be considered as a lack of transparency but is how things works. Nowadays there are communities with more that 100 neighbours in which many of them are asking for different papers and information to the administrators making impossible to comply with all this requirements.

The most common situation in communities is that the administrator will provide with copies of the minutes ( sometime charging for this); will be provided to the owner his particular account with the community; and will be offered to every owner the opportunity to check all the invoices about any particular community expenditure. Anyway, for all the rest of the documents every community can approved whatever the owners consider convenient and agree with the administrator for the extra work required.