The seller's warranty against eviccion in Spain: Codigo Civil Article 1475 and what happens when a third party takes your property back (2026)

A Spanish property sale carries a statutory warranty that most buyers never see until something goes wrong. When a court rules that someone else owned the house before the purchase, the seller, not the buyer, has to make the loss good. Codigo Civil Article 1475 defines that duty, and Articles 1476 to 1483 fill in what the seller pays, what the buyer must do to keep the right alive, and how the parties can reshape it by contract.

What is saneamiento por eviccion under Codigo Civil Article 1475?

Saneamiento por eviccion is the seller’s statutory duty to indemnify a buyer when a final court judgment strips the buyer of all or part of a purchased thing on the strength of a right that predated the sale. Article 1475 of the Codigo Civil defines it in two sentences: eviccion occurs when the buyer is deprived, by a final judgment and by virtue of a right anterior to the purchase, of the whole or part of the thing sold. The seller answers for it even if the contract says nothing, though the parties may widen, narrow or suppress the legal duty by agreement.

The warranty rests on three pillars that the Tribunal Supremo has repeated for over a century. First, the deprivation must rest on a final judgment, not a threat or an administrative act. Second, the victorious right must predate the sale, which is what links the loss back to the seller’s title rather than to the buyer’s conduct. Third, the buyer must have been genuinely deprived of the thing, which is why a mere cloud on title does not trigger the action until the judgment falls.

The warranty is automatic but not unconditional. Article 1474 frames it as part of the broader saneamiento duty, alongside the warranty against hidden defects (vicios ocultos) in Article 1484. The two limbs travel together as the seller’s promise that the buyer will enjoy legal and peaceful possession, but they have different triggers, different procedures and different deadlines, which the comparison table below sets out.

When does the seller’s warranty actually bite?

The warranty bites when a court, by a final judgment, orders the buyer to give up the property to a third party whose right existed before the sale. Article 1480 is explicit that the buyer cannot demand saneamiento until the judgment is final, meaning all appeals are exhausted or the time to appeal has run. A pending claim, however serious, is not enough.

Common triggers on the Costa del Sol include an undisclosed mortgage or embargo that predates the escritura, an heir who proves the seller never had full title to sell, a boundary or servitude ruling that slices off part of the finca, and a successful reivindicatoria action by a previous owner. The nota simple is the first line of defence against most of these, because it surfaces registered burdens before completion, but it cannot reveal an unregistered claim such as an intestate heir.

The judgment must be on a right anterior to the purchase. If the buyer loses the property because of something that happened after the sale, a later embargo or a community debt that accrued after the escritura, the warranty does not engage. That distinction matters in practice because it forces the buyer’s lawyer to prove the anteriority of the victorious right, not merely the fact of the loss.

What must the seller refund when eviccion happens?

When the warranty applies and the contract has not been waived, Article 1478 lists the items the buyer may recover from the seller. The table below summarises each head of recovery and the condition that attaches to it.

Head of recovery (Art 1478)	When it is due
1. The price the thing had at the time of eviccion, whether higher or lower than the sale price	Always
2. Fruits or yields the buyer was ordered to hand to the victorious third party	When the judgment so orders
3. Costs of the litigation that caused the eviccion and, where applicable, the litigation against the seller	Always, as costs of the plea
4. Contract costs the buyer paid (notary, registry, lawyer)	When the buyer paid them
5. Damages, interest and voluntary improvements	Only if the seller acted in bad faith

The price refund is not frozen at the sale figure. Article 1478.1 returns the price the thing had at the moment of eviccion, which may be higher if the property appreciated, or lower if it depreciated. That protects the buyer against being made whole in nominal terms while losing real value, and it reflects the Tribunal Supremo’s reading that the warranty is restorative, not punitive.

The bad-faith uplift in item 5 is where the warranty gains teeth. A seller who knew of the prior claim and stayed silent faces the full package: damages, interest and the cost of voluntary improvements or ornament. The line between good and bad faith is factual, and Spanish jurisprudence treats a seller who had actual knowledge of a competing title, or who deliberately concealed an embargo, as acting in mala fe for these purposes.

What is the buyer’s duty to notify the seller of the claim?

The warranty is not self-executing. Article 1481 conditions the seller’s liability on proof that the buyer notified the seller of the eviction claim at the buyer’s instance. Without that notification, the seller is not bound to answer. The rule exists because the seller has the strongest incentive and often the best evidence to defend the title, and a buyer who keeps the seller in the dark forfeits that help.

Article 1482 sets the mechanism. The buyer, once sued, must ask the court within the deadline to answer the demanda to have the claim notified to the seller, and the court summons the seller to appear in the same way it would a defendant. The buyer’s own answer period is suspended until the seller’s answer period runs. If the seller fails to appear, the buyer’s clock resumes and the buyer is still protected.

The notification duty is the single most common reason warranty claims fail. A buyer who settles with the third party, or who lets the lawsuit run without telling the seller, loses the Article 1478 package even if the eviction was real. The Tribunal Supremo has carved out a narrow exception: where notification would have been useless, because the seller could not have defended the suit, the warranty can still bite, but the buyer carries a heavy burden to prove that uselessness.

Can the parties waive or modify the warranty?

Yes, within limits. Article 1475 itself allows the parties to increase, decrease or suppress the legal warranty by contract. A clause that fully releases the seller from eviccion liability is valid, and is common in distressed sales where the buyer accepts the title risk in exchange for a lower price.

Two guardrails constrain the waiver. First, Article 1476 voids any waiver made in bad faith by the seller, meaning the seller who knew the title was vulnerable cannot hide behind a release clause. Second, Article 1477 narrows the remedy when the buyer knowingly accepted the risk: the seller then owes only the price the thing had at the time of eviccion, not the full Article 1478 package, unless the buyer specifically submitted to the consequences of the eviction.

For a Costa del Sol purchase, the practical reading is that a sweeping “as seen” clause in a private contrato de compraventa rarely wipes the warranty, because the seller almost always has more knowledge of the title’s history than the buyer. A lawyer drafting a release must record what the buyer knew and what the seller disclosed, or the clause is fragile.

How does eviccion differ from the warranty for hidden defects?

The Codigo Civil splits the sale warranty into two limbs that buyers often conflate. Eviccion (Art 1475) protects the legal title; vicios ocultos (Art 1484) protects the physical and legal usability of the thing. The comparison below, which the guide to hidden defects treats in full, shows how the two diverge.

Feature	Eviccion (Art 1475)	Vicios ocultos (Art 1484)
Trigger	Final judgment stripping title or possession	Hidden defect making the thing unfit or less valuable
Cause of action	A prior third-party right	A latent physical or legal defect
Time bar	Runs from the final judgment (Art 1480)	Six months from delivery (Art 1490)
Buyer’s options	Refund of price, costs, and in bad faith damages	Rescind the sale, or reduce the price (quanti minoris)
Notification duty	Buyer must notify the seller of the claim (Art 1481)	No equivalent; the buyer must prove the defect existed at sale
Waiver	Permitted unless seller acted in bad faith (Art 1476)	Permitted if the seller did not know the defect (Art 1485)

The two limbs can overlap in edge cases, for instance an unregistered servitude that is both a title burden and a hidden defect, but the Codigo Civil treats them as separate actions with separate deadlines. A buyer facing both should plead both, because the six-month hidden-defects clock is far shorter than the eviction clock, which only starts at the final judgment.

What happens when only part of the property is lost?

Partial eviccion still triggers the warranty, proportionally. The buyer recovers the part of the price that matches the part lost, plus the costs attributable to that part. The remedy is the same in kind, just smaller in amount.

Article 1479 adds a powerful option for partial evictions that gut the value of what remains. If the lost part was so important that the buyer would not have bought the rest without it, the buyer may rescind the whole contract and return what is left, instead of taking a partial refund. The same rule applies when two or more things were sold together for a single price and one is evicted: the buyer can rescind the entire bundle if it is clear the buyer would not have bought one without the other.

The rescission route matters on subdivided plots and on urbanisations where a boundary ruling can sever the access or the views that made the property worth buying. A buyer who ends up with a landlocked garden because a court restored a pre-sale servitude is the textbook case for Article 1479 rescission rather than a pro-rata refund.

Does the warranty apply to judicial sales and auctions?

Partially. Article 1489 removes the liability for damages and interest in judicial sales, but the rest of the warranty, including the price refund and the costs, survives. A buyer at a court auction is therefore still protected against a prior right that defeats the title, but cannot claim the broader damages available in a private sale.

The carve-out reflects the idea that the court, not a voluntary seller, is the transferor and the buyer takes the title as the court found it. In practice, buyers at Spanish auctions lean heavily on the property registration process and on the tracto sucesivo rule to verify the chain of title before bidding, because the Article 1478.5 uplift is off the table.

How does the buyer prove and pursue an eviccion claim?

The claim is an ordinary civil action, and it runs against the seller once the third-party judgment is final. The buyer must prove four facts: the sale contract, the final judgment depriving the buyer of the thing, the anteriority of the victorious right to the purchase, and the notification of the claim to the seller under Article 1481.

The practical workflow is sequential. First, the buyer defends the third-party suit and notifies the seller, which keeps the warranty alive. Second, once the judgment is final, the buyer quantifies the Article 1478 package, including any bad-faith uplift. Third, the buyer demands payment from the seller, and if the seller refuses, files the saneamiento action. The do I need a lawyer question answers itself here: the procedural and evidentiary burden is heavy, and an unrepresented buyer rarely clears it.

A buyer who is a foreigner buying in Spain should also note that the saneamiento action is time-barred by the general five-year prescription in Article 1964 of the Codigo Civil, counted from the final eviction judgment. The window is generous compared with the six-month hidden-defects clock, but it still runs, and a buyer who waits years to pursue the seller risks losing the remedy.

What should a buyer check before completion to avoid eviccion?

Prevention is cheaper than the warranty. The standard due diligence stack, which the guide to property encumbrances and the guide to liens and embargoes set out in detail, aims to surface the anterior rights that cause eviccion before the buyer pays.

The minimum checks are a current nota simple from the Registro de la Propiedad, a check of the seller’s tax position with AEAT where possible, a review of the prior title chain for gaps or suspicious transfers, and a physical inspection against boundary and servitude claims. The nota simple reveals registered burdens such as mortgages, embargoes and anotaciones preventivas, but it cannot reveal an unregistered heir or an unrecorded oral contract, which is where the warranty becomes the buyer’s backstop.

A seller who discloses a known claim in the contrato de arras, and a buyer who accepts it, may reshape the warranty under Article 1475, but the disclosure must be specific. A generic “the buyer accepts the legal state” clause has been read narrowly by Spanish courts, because it does not put the buyer on notice of a particular anterior right. The cleaner the disclosure, the more enforceable the modification.