Inquiokupa: What It Means and How to Get Your Costa del Sol Property Back

An inquiokupa is a tenant who signed a contract, stopped paying, and will not leave. Spanish police cannot remove them, because nothing criminal has happened. The owner goes through a civil eviction for non-payment, which on the Costa del Sol takes several months to more than a year, or negotiates an exit, which usually takes weeks. This is the route we run most often at Santina Property Solutions, and it is the one most owners abroad get wrong first.

The inquiokupa problem in numbers

Squatting figures count criminal complaints, so they understate the problem. An inquiokupa never appears in them, because no complaint is filed. The number of non-paying tenants on the coast is unknown and, in our experience, larger.

Which situation is yours?

Spanish law gives you three different doors, and knocking on the wrong one costs months.

• They had a contract and stopped paying, or the contract ended and they stayed. This is the inquiokupa. Civil eviction for non-payment or expiry, article 250 of the Civil Procedure Act. This post is about you.
• They broke in or moved into an empty property. That is an okupa, a criminal matter under article 245 of the Penal Code. Our occupied property page explains that route and what the 2025 law changed.
• You let them in and they never left. A relative, an ex-partner, a friend. Precario, through the quick recovery procedure of Ley 5/2018.

Why the police will not help with an inquiokupa

Because there is no crime. A tenant who stops paying is in breach of a contract, and contracts are enforced by civil courts. Owners who call the Guardia Civil to a flat where the tenant has a signed lease are told, politely, to see a lawyer. Owners who change the locks while the tenant is at work are the ones who end up in front of a criminal judge, for coacciones. Spanish courts have convicted landlords for cutting the electricity and for sending people round to make life uncomfortable. Once someone lives inside with a contract behind them, the way out is a court order or an agreement.

How the civil eviction actually runs

Your lawyer files a demanda de desahucio por falta de pago, usually with a claim for the unpaid rent in the same document. The court serves it on the tenant. From that moment the tenant has ten days to pay everything owed, which stops the first claim dead. That is the enervación, and it is a one-time card. If they pay and default again, the second claim cannot be stopped the same way.

If they do not pay or oppose, the court sets a date for the lanzamiento, the physical hand-over, in the same ruling, without a separate trial. If they oppose, there is a hearing, then a ruling, then the lanzamiento date. Since the 2023 Housing Act the claim must say whether the property is the tenant’s habitual home, whether the tenant is in a vulnerable situation, and whether the owner is a gran tenedor with ten or more properties. A gran tenedor has to try a conciliation first. A private owner with one flat in Estepona does not.

A national decree in force since 8 October 2026, Real Decreto-ley 29/2026, adds a step when the tenant is economically vulnerable. The court tells the regional government, which has two months to offer the tenant other housing or pay you everything owed plus costs. The case is paused for those two months. If the government does neither, it takes over the tenant’s debt, the eviction does not go ahead and the contract runs on while the vulnerability lasts. Where vulnerability is shown by a social services report and there is nowhere else to go, the court can also pause the case for up to three years, with the regional government compensating a private landlord for the lost rent. Congress confirmed the decree on 12 November 2026; our election post tracks where it stands. For a tenant who is not vulnerable, nothing changes.

How long it takes on the coast

The courts in Estepona, Marbella and Fuengirola are busy and the lanzamiento needs a court official and sometimes police. A tenant who does nothing can be out in four to six months. A tenant with a lawyer, a vulnerability report and a child in the flat can take a year or more. Every month costs you the rent you are not receiving, the community fees and IBI you are still paying, and the repairs you will find when you get in. On a 1,500 euro a month flat, a year of inquiokupa costs the owner 18,000 euros in rent alone before the lawyer sends an invoice.

The faster route: an agreed exit

Most of the inquiokupa cases we close end with a signed agreement, a hand-over date and, often, a sum of money paid on the day the keys come back. Owners hate the idea of paying someone who already owes them. The arithmetic usually wins: a few thousand euros against a year of lost rent and legal costs, with the property back in weeks. The agreement is legal, written, and the claim is filed in parallel so the clock is running if the tenant changes their mind.

What makes it work is that the tenant is dealing with someone local who turns up, speaks their language, and can offer a date and a number rather than a threat. A letter from a lawyer in London does not do that. In Cancelada we took on a townhouse with a non-paying tenant in one part and rooms sublet to strangers in the other, on top of an unpaid mortgage and an unresolved inheritance. Everyone left by agreement and the house sold six months after we started.

What to do in the first week

• Gather the contract, the bank statements showing the missed payments, the deposit record and any messages. The claim is built on them.
• Do not accept a partial payment without advice. It can reset the picture for the enervación.
• Check your home insurance. Some Spanish policies cover legal costs for non-payment, a few cover lost rent.
• Get a local lawyer who files these claims in the court where the property sits, and a local person who can talk to the tenant.
• Decide now what the property is for afterwards. If you are going to sell, our selling guide explains what an empty, cleaned property is worth against one with a tenant inside, and the break-even post has the selling costs.

If you are buying a property with a tenant in it

A flat sold with a tenant who “will be leaving soon” is the most common way to inherit someone else’s inquiokupa. The four checks before you sign include asking for the contract and the last six months of rent receipts. If the seller cannot produce them, price the property as occupied, because it is.

Where Santina fits

Santina Property Solutions coordinates the lawyer, the conversation with the tenant, the hand-over and the clean-up, then Santina Homes sells or re-lets the property if that is what the owner wants. We work the Estepona and Marbella stretch of the coast, where most of what we sell sits. The first conversation is free and confidential, and if the honest answer is that the court route is the only one, we say so.

Frequently Asked Questions