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THE WAYPOINT SUR
Your reply to your landlord matters
Since 8 October, qualifying tenants have an extra way to answer a landlord's "we won't renew" letter: requesting an extension.
On 7 October the government published a Real Decreto-ley — royal decree-law, a law the cabinet passes alone and Congress must then confirm or it lapses. Decree 29/2026 lets a qualifying tenant ask for up to two more years, a year at a time, on current terms.
Who can ask
The home is your main residence, rented under the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos — Spain's standard tenancy law. The contract was in force on 8 October. The lease is reaching one of these end points: the mandatory term under article 9.1 of that law, if it ends before 31 December 2028; the end of a tacit extension under article 10.1 or 10.2; or the end of a rollover under article 1566 of the Civil Code. Where automatic renewal applies, it comes first, and Civil Code rollovers need a separate check. You are current on rent and have been current each month for the previous eight months.
What the landlord can and cannot do
The landlord has to accept, with limited exits: a properly notified need to live there themselves or house close family, real and proven, and valid for this extension even without a contract clause; a new contract signed; other terms you have both agreed; or a renewal at a rent at least 5% lower.
What to send and how
The decree sets no form and no deadline. Our advice: put the request in writing before the term ends, send it by burofax — Correos' tracked letter with certified content, from any Correos office, and keep the last eight months' rent receipts with it. The non-renewal letter does not itself create the right; it is the moment the request matters most.
If the reply needs writing in Spanish and sending by burofax, and then dealing with what comes back, that is Navigator work. Work is in €30-an-hour blocks with a free estimate, and we'll tell you first if we don't think we can help.
The 15 November question
A second decree, 28/2026, is due to apply from 15 November, if confirmed. Where a landlord validly ends a tenancy after at least five years (seven with a company landlord), compensation would be the greater of 12 monthly amounts or one per year lived there, with partial years prorated. The basis is the upper value of the home's individualised state reference-index range; current contractual rent substitutes only if that value is unavailable. Article 10.2 exclusions and transitional rules are in our renewal guide. Extensions already running under the old article 10.1 on 15 November finish first.
A tenant who qualified for the extension above and did not ask gets no compensation. A tenant who asked, where it applies, has the compensation deferred until the extension ends; asking alone does not establish entitlement. Non-renewal notices validly sent before 7 October keep their effect and carry none.
What we cannot tell you
Both decrees still need confirmation by the Diputación Permanente — Congress's standing committee, which acts for Congress while it is dissolved ahead of the 29 November election. The legal window to confirm them closes in the first half of November; no vote date is announced. Today's session at 11:00 has two other decrees on its published agenda.
If a decree is not confirmed, it stops applying, and neither text says what happens to an extension already requested. We cannot tell you that asking now preserves anything in that case. If decree 28 survives, a tenant otherwise entitled to compensation loses it by failing to request an applicable extension the landlord must accept.
On 6 October we promised to come back to what changes for you while Spain waits for a new government; this is the first of those pieces: the rules your lease now runs on were made by decree and wait on the standing committee.
For every renter: the rent update
Any annual update due between 8 October 2026 and 31 December 2027 runs on new limits. No update clause in the contract, no increase. Rent above the state reference maximum for the home, no increase. Otherwise, what you agree, at most 2% without a new agreement, and in every case no more than the latest IRAV, the state rent-update index, at the update date (2.54% for September 2026, from INE, the national statistics office). On €1,200 a month, 2% is €24.
No electricity tax cut in November
The relief in decree 25/2026 needed INE's September electricity price index more than 15% above a year earlier; it came in 11.4% higher. November bills carry 21% VAT and the standard electricity tax. The next test is October's figure, published mid-November, for December.
Spanish-lite
Solicito la prórroga extraordinaria del contrato conforme al Real Decreto-ley 29/2026 — I request the extraordinary extension of the contract under Royal Decree-law 29/2026.
The bottom line
A non-renewal letter on a qualifying Costa lease now opens a choice, made in writing. Our advice is to make the request before the term ends while the extension is available. Our read: asking costs a burofax, and not asking could cost two years.
Confirmed October 2026
Enjoy the weekend — A. and the WaypointSur team, rent receipts filed in date order.
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