As nobody likes to appear in public as a debtor, traditionally, the communities have been publishing the list of the debtors in its Notice Board as a way to push them to pay the outstanding fees.
Taking into consideration the heavy fines the Agency for the Data Protection Law is applying to some communities and administrators for infringements of the Data Protection Law, I am afraid this way of making pressure to the debtors is not advisable anymore.
Unfortunately, Spanish Data Protection Law ( Ley 15/1999 ) is extremely complex and there are many areas without a clear regulation. Anyway, some concepts and definitions should be considered:
The article 3, a) stipulates that: Personal data is any information concerning identified or identifiable natural persons.
This means that who is the owner of a property or how much is the amount this person owes to the community are personal data affected by the law.
According to article 11, a) the communication of the personal data to third persons would be only allowed for purposes directly related to the legitimate functions of the transferor and transferee, with the prior consent of the data subject ( In this case the debtor).
Having said this, we should ask ourselves: Are we transferring a personal data if we publish the list of debtors in the notice board of the community? The answer would be Yes, because this list of debtors can also be seen by people that are not members of the community and has no legitimate interest in this information.
As the debtor will not authorize the community to publish this information, the only legal authorization to publish this list of debtors in the Notice Board comes from the Art. 11,b) where it is established that this consent of the person affected would not be necessary: a) when the transfer is authorised by a law.
This means that this publication of the debtor list in the Notice Board will only be legal when it is allowed in the Horizontal Property Law, in which the Art. 15.2 stipulates: The meeting summons will show the proprietors who have been deprived of the vote right, and whose person and participation quota in the community will not be estimated to effects of reaching majorities which are required on this Act.
The Art. 16.2 says: “ Notifications should be made the stated way on article 9th. The citation will include a list of the proprietors who are not up-to-date in the payment of due debts to the community and it warn about the deprivation of vote right if assumption on the article 15.2 happen.”
Finally, the article 9, h) establishes that: If the attempted notification or call were impossible to be practice at the place prevented in the previous paragraph ( The address of the owner), it will be made by placing the corresponding communication on the community Notice Board, or in a visible place of on a general use place fit out for such effect, explaining the date and reasons for which they proceed to this notification way.
This means that the community would only be entitled to publish the list of debtors in the Notice board if there is a General Assembly and it is not possible to notify personally the agenda to some of the owners, or when the community has not been able to notify the minutes to the absentee owners, because only in these two cases the community would have to notify them through the Notice Board.
In any other situation, this information in the notice board will be considered against the data protection Law and this infringement will be punished according to the penalties set out in the Data Protection Law.
Having said this, all the communities should be aware of the penalties they or their administrators could face supposing they still notify the list of debtors in the Notice Board of the community with a purpose different from calling for a General Assembly to someone that has not been able to be notified personally in his address or to notify the minutes of the meeting to the absentee owners.