When does acquisitive prescription (“usucapión”) not apply?

When possession is not as owner

To acquire ownership by prescription, a person must possess as owner. Someone who holds the asset while acknowledging that it belongs to someone else cannot do so, nor can someone who only has it because the owner tolerates it, which is what the Catalan code calls mere holding (“mera detentación”). This applies to the following people:

• The tenant, who by the tenancy agreement and the payment of rent acknowledges that the flat belongs to the landlord.
• The occupier by permission (“precarista”), the person who was allowed to live there without paying, such as a child, a sibling or an ex-partner.
• The usufructuary, anyone who has the thing on loan or for safekeeping and the person put in charge of a property.

For any of them to start acquiring by prescription, they must make it clear to the owner, through outward and unequivocal acts, that they now possess as owner, for example by openly refusing to acknowledge the owner. Ceasing to pay or the mere passage of time is not enough, because the law presumes that possession continues on the same basis on which it began.

Something similar happens with a co-owner who has exclusive use of a jointly owned asset, such as a sibling who lives in the inherited house. In principle, they also possess it on behalf of the others. They only acquire the others' share if they possess as sole owner, clearly and with the others' knowledge, for the whole period.

Other cases in which there is no acquisitive prescription

Nor is there acquisitive prescription in these cases:

• If possession is violent or concealed, because it must be public and peaceful. Someone who enters a home by force does not start acquiring by prescription while the owner objects. How to recover a home occupied by squatters is a separate matter.
• If the asset is part of the public domain, such as streets, public paths, beaches or buildings assigned to a public service. It cannot be acquired by prescription while it remains assigned to that use. The 2026 judgment of the “Tribunal Supremo”, Spain's Supreme Court, on the Pazo de Meirás requires conclusive acts by the public authorities showing that they have stopped using it for that purpose.
• If stolen movable goods are involved. For any possessor, including someone who bought them in good faith from a private individual, the three years do not start to run until the offence, its penalty or the civil claim arising from it has become time-barred.
• If possession has been interrupted, for example by a formal demand served through a notary or a court claim, or has not lasted the whole period.
• Against someone who bought the property in good faith and registered the purchase at the “Registro de la Propiedad”, the Land Registry. Against that buyer, acquisitive prescription only has effect, even if it had already been completed, if they knew or had reason to know that another person was possessing the property as owner, or if they consented to that possession for the whole year following the purchase.

In Catalonia, easements, such as a right of way, cannot be acquired over time either.

What does not prevent it

There are two things that many people think prevent it in Catalonia but which do not:

• Bad faith. Someone who knows that the property belongs to someone else can also acquire it by prescription in twenty years if they possess it as owner, in full view of everyone and without violence.
• The owner still appearing in the Land Registry or paying the IBI, the local property tax. That alone does not interrupt the period. It is interrupted by the grounds laid down by law, such as a notarial demand or a court claim.

Under the Spanish Civil Code (“Código civil”), which applies in most of the rest of Spain, what is possessed with the owner's permission or by the owner's tolerance cannot be acquired by prescription either. Bad faith does not prevent acquisitive prescription, but it means waiting thirty years for properties.