Hi all. There is a lot of chatter about a new Supreme Court ruling in Spain which was made on 15th December 2015. Basically it says banks are liable if money was paid into a developers bank account and the developer has gone bust.
Here is a link to one such article with my translation below.
http://www.expansion.com/juridico/actualidad-tendencias/2016/02/23/56ccb8e2e2704e065c8b45e7.html
Without doubt, this marks a turning point for those buyers who received no guarantee whatsoever after paying a deposit (literally an amount on account) to a promoter who subsequently went bust.
This ruling, which for the first time takes into account the Supreme Court's strong resolution, opens the door for thousands of people who bought their homes off plan and who had given up their money as lost to pursue the banks, explains the lawyer Eduardo Barrau Bascompte from the office of Leyda-Barrau, who won this case. "This is a sentence of material justice. It is important to note that section 11 of the APV has radically changed the criteria in this ruling and has applied the content of the judgement issued by the Supreme Court last December 21st (2015). From now on, no judge will be able to rule in a different way".
According to Barrau's explanation, this new way is open to any citizen who did not receive a guarantee for the deposit made, who can prove that they made a payment to the entity (this means the bank). Moreover, it is not only directed at those who didn't get a house because the site hasn't been finished, but also at those who received the keys to their new home after the deadline. On the other hand, the lawyer adds that all those who had taken action against the promoter to cancel the contract will also be able to bring a case against the bank to try to recover their deposits.
La doctrina del Tribunal Supremo.
Given the different interpretations of article 1 of the law 57/1968 by the various national courts, the civil chamber of the Supreme Court ruled on the 21st of last December (2015) and set jurisprudence on the joint and several liability of the bank's where promoters had gone bankrupt. The high court underlines that, as is explained in the law, developers who receive deposits must always open special accounts for the deposits and they must arrange guarantees to cover the full amount deposited by the purchaser; it adds that a financial institution that accepts deposits from purchasers into a promoter's account without making them open a special account with the corresponding guarantees will be liable to the purchasers for the total amounts deposited in the account.