Do ground-floor flats and commercial premises have to pay for installing and maintaining the lift?

Installation

The owners' general meeting can approve the installation of a lift by a simple majority, even if this means amending the deed of constitution, which is the deed by which the building was divided, or the by-laws of the owners' association (the “comunidad de propietarios”), or altering the structure or the façade. It is enough that, among those voting, the votes and participation shares in favour exceed the votes and participation shares against. Once the works are approved, their costs are borne by all the owners, including those who voted against and those who will not use the lift. Unlike other improvements, here an owner who votes against is not released from paying, however much the works cost.

Maintenance and exemptions

The maintenance of a lift that is already installed is shared among all the owners according to their participation share, including those who do not use it. Neither commercial premises nor the homes on the ground floor, the ground-floor flats, have an exemption by law. They are only released if the by-laws specifically exempt them from the lift expenses. Catalan law accepts such clauses for maintenance costs and the courts interpret them strictly:

• If the building had no lift and one is installed, the exemption does not, in principle, cover the installation. The “Tribunal Supremo”, Spain's Supreme Court, applying the national law, has held that exempting commercial premises and garages from a new lift because they do not use it would be abusive towards the owners of the flats.
• In 2021 the Barcelona “Audiencia Provincial”, the provincial appeal court, applied the same approach to commercial premises that were exempt from the lobby, staircase and lift expenses, when the owners' association replaced the lift with one that went down to street level to make the building accessible.
• Where the existing lift is only renewed or adapted, the Supreme Court has accepted in other cases that the exemption covers the cost. It depends on what the clause says and on the works being carried out.

If the owners' association wants to exempt them now

For maintenance, the owners' general meeting can set a special share that reduces or removes what ground-floor flats or commercial premises pay, with the votes of four-fifths of the owners and of the participation shares.

For the installation, the question has not been settled in Catalonia. The Supreme Court, in its judgment 277/2026 of 23 February, held that under the national law the resolutions on allocation and exemption linked to the installation of the lift are approved by the same majority as the installation itself. In that case, the owners who gave up their storage rooms so that the works could be carried out were exempted. The Supreme Court requires an objective reason such as that and points out that use is not what determines who pays.

The Catalan code, by contrast, allows the lift to be approved by a simple majority, but requires unanimity to change the participation shares and four-fifths to set special shares for expenses. It can be argued that, where the exemption is necessary to make the works possible, it forms part of the same resolution and a simple majority is enough, but no judgments of the “Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Cataluña”, the High Court of Justice of Catalonia, or of the Barcelona provincial appeal court are known to have resolved the point. Until there are, the prudent course is to approve the exemption by a four-fifths majority and to base it on an objective reason. The fact that ground-floor flats or commercial premises will not use the lift is unlikely, on its own, to be a sufficient reason.