La Malahá approves the ordinance on ruinous plots and substitution of owners

The City Council of La Malahá has finalized the Regulatory Ordinance of the Municipal Registry of Vacant Lots and Ruinous Buildings, the regulation that empowers the Council to replace owners who fail to fulfill their legal duties of construction, conservation, and rehabilitation. The plenary agreement, adopted on July 20, 2026, and automatically finalized as no allegations were presented during the public exhibition period, is published in the Official Gazette of the Province of Granada No. 189, dated September 30, 2026 (CVE: BOP-GRA-2026-189013). The ordinance will enter into force fifteen days after its full publication in the provincial gazette.

A public registry with six grounds for registration

The edict, signed by Mayor Javier Ramírez Fernández in La Malahá on September 23, 2026, and processed under number 2026049352, complies with Article 70.2 of Law 7/1985, which regulates the Bases of the Local Regime. The text, spanning ten pages, is organized into four titles and fifteen articles and develops the duties that Articles 144, 145, and 146 of the LISTA impose on property owners.

The registry is administrative in nature and public in character: any citizen may consult its books and obtain certification of its content. The following may be registered:

• Unbuilt vacant lots.
• Halted constructions, after two months have passed since the notification of the license’s expiration.
• Buildings that are inadequate with respect to current planning.
• Deficient buildings, with serious safety shortcomings or risks to people.
• Ruinous buildings.
• Land in urban areas.

Competition, expropriation, and compliance deadlines

Execution by substitution is activated in two cases: failure to fulfill the duty to build and failure to fulfill the duty to restore, the latter with a deadline of two years from the inclusion of a property declared in ruins in the registry. The competition to replace the owner may be initiated ex officio or at the request of an interested party, with a general term of one year or two months if a request is made by a private individual.

Applicants must submit in a sealed envelope:

• A certified construction project or a commitment to present one within a maximum of 45 days, with a 5% guarantee.
• A commitment to transfer the rights to the technical project.
• A commitment to fulfill the remaining legal duties.
• A commitment to pay the award price to the replaced owner.
• A commitment to execute the construction within a specified timeframe.

The call for applications will be published in the Official Gazette of the Province and in one of the newspapers with the widest circulation, with a definitive guarantee of 4% of the material execution cost. If the tender remains vacant, the City Council will have six months to call for a new one or acquire the property for the Municipal Land Heritage. The expropriation process is referred to articles 119 to 126 of the LISTA, through the joint appraisal procedure.

Processing, publicity, and registry control

The inclusion procedure may be initiated by municipal initiative, at the request of another public administration, or at the request of any citizen. Notifications must be carried out within ten days, and interested parties have fifteen days to present allegations; the final resolution has a maximum term of one year, with ex officio expiration if it is not issued within that time. The inclusion will be communicated to the Property Registry via a marginal note, which will expire in three years, and will be forwarded to the Ministry of Housing and Territorial Planning of the Regional Government of Andalusia. The registry is the responsibility of the municipal secretary, managed by the Department of Urban Planning, Works, and Maintenance.

Appeal and entry into force

An administrative-law appeal may be filed against the agreement before the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the High Court of Justice of Andalusia, based in Granada, within a period of two months starting from the day following the publication of the announcement.

The regulation provides La Malahá with an instrument to force the rehabilitation of vacant lots and ruined buildings, which until now depended on execution orders that could go unfulfilled. Owners of unused properties now face fixed deadlines and the possibility of losing ownership in favor of a third-party awardee or the City Council itself, while the Council gains the capacity to stop the deterioration of the urban center and mobilize residential land.

Source: Official Gazette of the Province of Granada, no. 189, September 30, 2026, Local Administration, pp. 224-234 (official reference: BOP-GRA-2026-189013).