The Spanish cadastre is an administrative register with a fiscal origin, created as a data bank to be accessed both by Public Administrations (national, regional, local) and citizens. As an inventory of real estate, it contains physical information (surfaces, location, use, shape, boundaries, cartographic representation, crops and forest use, type and quality of constructions, etc.), legal information (identification of holders or owners: name, national identification number, address, etc.) and economic information (cadastral values of land and buildings, valuation criteria). This cadastral bank includes detailed information of more than 32 million urban properties, more than 40 million rural properties and more than 27 million cadastral owners.

The Cadatral Electronic Site started up in May 2003 with the main goal of providing other Administrations with information which, up to that moment, citizens were requested to present in the suitable office after collecting it themselves from the cadastral office. At the moment, the Cadatral Electronic Site provides the following services:

Request for cadastral information, both alphanumeric and graphic (maps). This service allows to look up the physical and economic features of properties as well as their owner. The data can be obtained from the location (address) of a building, from its cadastral reference or code, or from a list of the properties owned by a person.
Massive request service. Instead of making individual queries, it is possible to send a file in a predefined format with necessary data and this service replies with all the requested information in a file.
Certificate of the cadastral data (official document with the data obtained from a previous request). This document is obtained immediately and at no cost. The validity of this document is based on a code of 16 characters printed in the document itself, which, once typed in one of the options of the application, allows to recover the document as it was originally issued.
Exchange of information: It allows to exchange files, with a predefined format, between Cadastre and the different Administrations as well as with other collaborating organizations, with different purposes: coordination of the contents of data bases, updating of Cadastral information, legal effects, taxation, etc.

It is important to emphasize that all these services are provided at no cost, and have a universal nature. Nevertheless, as both the European Union and Spanish laws consider part of the cadastral data as protected data, access to these protected data of real estate is legally accessible only by certain institutions and administrations and, of course, by the owners of each particular property. Therefore the identification of the applicants is a most important subject . For that reason, involved administrations have to be registered off-line in the application and, once registered, they are obliged to use X509 digital certificates in order to authenticate the users. Owners of a particular property can access protected data of their own properties by authenticating themselves with a X509 digital certificate.

The General Directorate of the Cadastre has reached agreements with different Certification Authorities to admit the X509 certificates issued by them as mechanisms of authentication in the application.


Land registers in Member States - Spain
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The Registro de la Propiedad (Land Register) is a register which comes under the Ministry of Justice, with its affairs coming under the responsibility of the Dirección General de los Registros y del Notariado (directorate general of registers and notaries). The Register is used to record and publish ownership of property and rights attached to property and any court or administrative decisions which may affect them.
What does the Land Register in Spain offer?

Legal and economic security. And in the majority of cases this security is irrefutible.

Some of the most typical aspects of the Spanish Land Register system are described below.
1. Purpose of the Land Register

The purpose of the Land Register is to register ownership and other rights in rem in respect of immovable property.

1.1. Rights in rem which can be registered

The rights in rem which can be registered are: ownership, usufruct, rights of use and abode, encumbrances, leases, mortgages, right of redemption, and other rights in rem.

The Spanish Land Register is not a closed list of rights in rem., but a "numerus opertus" system in which rem rights can be created. Nevertheless, in practice it is difficult to create new types of rights since they would have to meet the structural requirements of rights in rem such as immediacy and absoluteness.

1.2. Other rights which can be registered

It is possible to enter other rights on the Land Register, although their true nature is not always clear. The following can be registered in this way: co-ownership statutes, leases, sub‑leases, transfers and subrogations of leases concerning immovable property, recovery of rented property, administrative concessions and mortgages on them, acts related to compulsory purchase or administrative proceedings, bans on access allowed by law, or reasons for the termination of registered rights, among others.

And in the area of town planning: final planning implementing measures affecting existing buildings, sales to municipal authorities, transfer of urban land use rights, conditions for planning permission, proceedings instituted in the area of town planning, and appeals lodged and the court's decisions, among others.

1.3. Other measures

Court decisions affecting the capacity of natural or legal persons and those arising from an arrangement with creditors can also be registered whenever they concern the ownership of real estate or rights in rem thereof.

In addition, through provisional registration the Register can record provisional situations that affect rights in rem related to real estate. For example, proceedings concerning rights that can be registered, confiscation, non-final decisions, court orders banning access to property, inheritance law and similar measures.
2. Legal Certainty in the Spanish Land Register

The Spanish Register system is definitely one of the safest in the world.

It is a Register of rights. The rights entered in the Register are protected by the courts, which means that no-one can be deprived of these rights unless legal proceedings involving the registered owner decide the contrary.

In addition, the legal system ascribes a series of legal presumptions to the registered rights that are based on the principle of the authority of the Register.

In cases of conflict between the actual situation and that contained in the Register, the declarations in the Register are regarded as reliable because of the principle of publication.

The principle of publication has two core elements:

The procedural element whereby registered owners can defend their registered rights in the courts before which the matter is being challenged by means of a certificate from the Registrar attesting the validity of the relevant matter without contradiction. The burden of proof therefore falls on the person challenging the registered right.

The substantive element to which there are two distinct dimensions:

Negative- anything not registered does not affect those who enter into a contract, relying on the contents of the Register.
Positive – there is a double presumption in the content of the register:

Principle of Legitimacy – the presumption in the absence of evidence to the contrary that the information published in the Register is truthful.
Principal of the authority of the Register – the presumption juris et de jure that the information published in the Register is accurate and complete, i.e. if the following requirements are met:
1. Registration of the owner who is transferring the property.
2. Acquisition for valuable consideration.
3. The purchaser is unaware of a circumstance that invalidates what is published in the Register (good faith is presumed in principle).
4. Entry by the purchaser; produces the legal effect that the new owner is fully protected by the Spanish registration system, even if the registered owner who transferred the right to him is not the real owner of the right.