Notary, Land Registry and Cadastre: who does what

The notary, the Land Registry (Registro de la Propiedad) and the Cadastre (Catastro, Spain’s land and property register for tax purposes) are the bodies that administer the rights and obligations attached to property and real estate.

The notary

Every purchase and sale, inheritance or expropriation of real estate involves the act of attestation by a notary. The notary provides legal certainty for the documents, guaranteeing the legitimacy of the documents in which they take part.

The Land Registry

The owners of properties are recorded in the Land Registry. These entries create, in an unchallengeable way, the authority of a public body. It is also the institution that strengthens legal certainty in property matters.

The Cadastre

The Cadastre is the body, answerable to the Ministry of Finance, in which the real estate across Spanish territory is described, in both rural and urban areas. Properties represent a geographical portion of our territory that is subject to taxation. This administrative register is responsible for collecting the relevant taxes.

The Spanish Mortgage Act

Before the 2015 reform of the Spanish Mortgage Act (Ley Hipotecaria), there was an obligation to keep the information up to date in both bodies. However, coordination between the Land Registry and the Cadastre was difficult because they were independent bodies. There was no simple way of identifying properties, which even led to duplicate entries. Today, at the request of the notary, the Land Registry and the Cadastre can be coordinated through georeferenced mapping.

Land Registry and Cadastre coordination

With the aim of improving communication between the Cadastre and the Land Registry, a joint resolution by the Director General for Legal Certainty and Attestation and the Director General for Cadastre was published in the BOE in 2021, approving the requirement that notarial documents must include the graphic representation of the property. In this way, the Cadastre and the Land Registry can uniquely identify the owner and the taxpayer.

The creation of new cadastral references, the correction of graphic discrepancies, new buildings on plots and physical changes to a plot such as mergers, aggregations, subdivisions or divisions require topographic surveys to establish the boundaries precisely and correct discrepancies. Geomatics engineers, land surveyors, agricultural engineers and architects are qualified to produce precise plans for the delimitation of plots and to issue the georeferenced graphic validation report for cadastral validation.

Tags actualizacion catastralcatastrolevantamiento topograficomapanotarioplanoregistro de la propiedad

Written by Vicent Doménech, geodesy and cartography engineer, chartered surveyor no. 8948.