The role you actually carry

Under the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal (Art. 10) the community of owners is obliged to maintain common areas in the conditions of safety, habitability, and accessibility required by law. "We maintained it" is a legal defence only if you can show it.

That means a per-element maintenance regime — pools, lifts, fire-protection systems, roofs, lighting, electrical panels, irrigation, each separately documented — and an evidentiary trail per visit: when, by whom, what was done, what was inspected, what was replaced, and what was deferred (and why). Spanish jurisprudence consistently distinguishes between documented and undocumented regimes when assigning liability after an incident.

Annual obligation: confirm coverage of every common-area element with a recurring schedule, store the supporting evidence in one place the junta can pull on demand, and align with the Ley de Ordenación de la Edificación (Art. 3, 16, 17) timeline for building-element life-cycle care. Owners who later sell rely on the same audit trail to demonstrate property condition to buyers.

Every supplier the community hires should carry current responsabilidad civil profesional — and you should see the policy before signing. RC profesional covers professional negligence (a faulty repair that causes follow-on damage, a missed inspection that contributes to an incident). Without it, the supplier's exposure caps at their own balance sheet — which for a one-person autónomo is effectively zero.

What to ask for before a contract: current RC profesional certificate with named insurer and validity window; certificado de estar al corriente with Hacienda and Seguridad Social; carnet or boletín for regulated work (electrical, gas, lift, fire). Cross-check the validity window — a certificate issued 14 months ago is often already expired.

Quote red flags: a price significantly below market (the supplier is either skipping insurance premiums or underestimating scope); refusal to itemise materials and labour separately; refusal to issue a factura with their CIF/NIF; one-line "all-in" pricing with no method statement. The cheapest quote is rarely the cheapest contract.

The Ley de Propiedad Horizontal (Art. 17) sets which decisions need a junta vote and what majority each requires. For routine maintenance the threshold is low; for any contract above the LPH-set amount, capital works, structural changes, or new shared installations you need a documented acta with the vote count, the dissenting owners named, and where applicable the cuotas of each.

The audit trail matters when an owner later disputes the decision — the acta is the legal record, and a poorly-documented vote is challengeable. Common failures: the discussion is summarised but the vote itself isn't recorded; the cuota breakdown of yes/no votes is missing; the administrador signs the contract before the acta is finalised; the minutes are circulated by email only, without owner acknowledgement.

The practical mechanics — collecting proxies, running hybrid in-person / remote juntas, archiving the actas so an incoming administrador can pick them up at the next term — are what consume weekends. They don't have to.