The European Squatter Survival Guide: From Barcelona’s okupas to Paris loopholes, why kicking out squatters in Europe (sometimes) takes a miracle.
Okupas and beyond: a clear-eyed guide to squatting law in Spain, France, Italy, and Portugal
Squatting headlines run hot, Spain's loudest of all. The reality is more measured, and far more useful once you can see it country by country. Here is how illegal occupation actually works across the four markets, how common it is, and what each country's law now does about it.
What You Need to Know
- Squatting is real and occasionally serious, but it is statistically uncommon and heavily concentrated in particular districts.
- In none of the four countries does occupying a property hand anyone the legal title to it.
- All four have tightened their squatting law since 2023, with Spain, Italy, and Portugal all reforming in 2025.
- The harder, slower cases are usually former tenants who stop paying, not strangers who break in.
- The single real risk at the point of buying is purchasing a property that already has someone inside.
Squatters are not the same as non-paying tenants
Almost every squatting story blurs two very different situations, and telling them apart is the most useful thing a buyer can do. A squatter, an okupa in Spanish, breaks into a property they have no right to occupy. That is a criminal matter, and it is the situation the recent reforms are built to tackle. A former tenant who entered legally on a lease and then stopped paying or refused to leave, an inquiokupa, is a civil matter, and it is both more common and slower to resolve.
The reforms sweeping across Europe mostly sharpen the response to the first group. The second still winds through the civil courts in every one of these countries. So when a headline shows you a broken lock, the more likely real-world headache is quieter: a tenancy that went wrong. Keep the two separate as you read on.
Spain: the headline market
Spain is where the word okupa entered the European vocabulary, and it carries the heaviest reputation. The roots run back to the 2008 to 2014 financial crisis, when hundreds of thousands of foreclosed and abandoned properties gave organised squatting room to take hold. The crisis has passed; the phenomenon has not. Spain's Interior Ministry recorded 16,426 reported cases of illegal occupation in 2024, up 7.4 per cent on the year before.
That figure sounds alarming until you set it against the size of the housing stock. Illegal occupation affects on the order of 0.06 per cent of Spain's roughly 26 million homes, and it clusters sharply by region. Catalonia alone accounts for more than four in ten reported cases, with Barcelona province carrying most of that load. The coastal apartment, the villa in a gated urbanizacion, and the new-build sit at the low end of the risk.
| Region | Cases (2024) | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Catalonia | 7,009 | 42.7% |
| Andalusia | 2,207 | 13.4% |
| Valencian Community | 1,767 | 10.8% |
| Madrid | 1,451 | 8.8% |
| Canary Islands | 663 | 4.0% |
| Balearic Islands | 514 | 3.1% |
| Rest of Spain | 2,815 | 17.2% |
| Total | 16,426 | 100% |
What Spain's 2025 law changed
Spain's reform, Organic Law 1/2025, was published in the Official State Gazette on 3 January 2025 and came into force on 3 April 2025. It is primarily procedural: it does not raise the criminal penalties, it speeds up how cases are handled, routing clear squatting offences through the fast-track criminal trial (juicio rapido).
| Aspect | Before (to April 2025) | After |
|---|---|---|
| Route | Civil eviction or standard criminal trial | Fast-track criminal trial |
| Typical time to resolution | Around 23 months on average | Roughly 15 to 20 days |
| Police powers | Court order needed, except when caught in the act | Action within 48 hours of a reported break-in |
| Vulnerability assessment | Required before eviction | Removed for fast-track cases |
| Covers non-paying tenants | Partly, via slow civil process | No, inquiokupas excluded |
The most important point for an overseas owner is the speed of reporting. If a break-in is flagged quickly, by a neighbour, a manager, or a monitoring service, the police can act without first obtaining a court order. Past that early window, the fast-track court process applies: a complaint is filed, the accused is brought before a judge within about 72 hours, a trial follows within roughly 15 days, and eviction follows the ruling. The practical lesson is that someone needs to notice quickly, which is why a local keyholder matters more than any single statistic.
On penalties, breaking into someone's home (allanamiento de morada) carries six months to two years, rising to one to four years where there is violence or intimidation. Occupying a vacant property (usurpacion) is generally met with a fine, with prison where force is used. Leaders of organised squatting networks can face up to eight years. These amounts were not changed by the 2025 reform; the change was speed.
Two points often misreported
Cutting off water or power to occupiers is not clearly authorised by national law. A Barcelona court accepted it in March 2025 and a bill to decriminalise it passed the Senate in November 2025, but it still awaits final approval, so legal counsel first. Separately, squatters do not gain ownership: adverse possession (usucapion) in Spain takes 30 years, or 10 with a registered good-faith title, and court action resets the clock, so it is not a realistic risk for a property anyone is watching.
One further shift matters in 2026: the pandemic-era eviction moratorium, which had paused removals of occupants deemed vulnerable, lapsed on 26 February 2026 when Parliament rejected another extension. Courts can still grant a short pause, up to two months for an individual owner or four for a company, while social services assess an occupant, but the blanket years-long suspension is gone.
France
France treats squatting a home as a criminal offence, and toughened it sharply with the law of 27 July 2023 (Law 2023-668, known as the loi Kasbarian-Berge). Breaking into or staying in another person's home now carries up to three years in prison and a €45,000 fine, tripled from the previous level, and the definition of a home was widened to cover a property whether or not it is currently lived in, including a temporarily empty second home that still holds the owner's belongings. A separate offence of fraudulently occupying premises carries up to two years and €30,000.
For a squatted home, an owner can use an accelerated administrative route through the prefet, which can produce an eviction in roughly 72 hours once ownership is shown, and the winter eviction truce does not shield squatters as it does struggling tenants. For a property that is not a home, or where a tenant has breached a lease, owners generally still go through the courts, which remains slow. As everywhere here, an owner cannot lawfully evict by self-help such as changing the locks.
Italy
Italy made the occupation of a home a distinct and serious crime in 2025. The Security Decree (Decree-Law 48/2025, converted into Law 80/2025) added Article 634-bis to the Criminal Code: occupying a home by violence or threat, or blocking the rightful owner's return, carries two to seven years. Alongside it, a new procedure (Article 321-bis) lets a prosecutor and the courts order fast restoration of possession, and where the property is the complainant's only home, the judicial police can order immediate release after initial checks.
Much of Italy's occupation, estimated at around 50,000 properties, is public housing concentrated in large cities such as Rome, Milan, Palermo, and Bari, rather than the second homes a foreign buyer typically considers. The practical buyer task is to confirm vacant possession at completion and have the notaio and a lawyer verify the position before signing.
Portugal
Portugal strengthened its criminal protection with Law 67/2025 of 24 November, which amended the crime of usurpacao de coisa imovel. Invading or occupying another's property to exercise a right not granted by law now carries up to two years or a fine, and crucially this no longer requires violence or a serious threat, which had been the sticking point. The penalty rises to up to three years where there is violence or where the property is the owner's own permanent home, and to one to four years for occupation carried out professionally or for profit. Attempt is now punishable, and prosecution still depends on a complaint by the owner.
The same law lets a judge order the immediate return of the property to the owner during the investigation, rather than at the end of a trial, where ownership and the offence are strongly indicated. The reform is recent, and its reach, including whether it now also catches former tenants who stay on without title, is still being read by the courts.
The four countries at a glance
| Country | Main reform | Headline penalty | Fast eviction route | Overseas-buyer risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | Organic Law 1/2025 (in force Apr 2025) | Home occupation 6 months to 2 years; organised leaders up to 8 years | Fast-track trial; police action within 48h of a reported break-in | Highest case numbers, but concentrated; low in coastal, gated, new-build |
| France | Law 2023-668 (Jul 2023) | Occupying a home up to 3 years and €45,000 | Prefet-ordered eviction, often within ~72h for a home | Vacant non-home property and lease breaches still go through the courts |
| Italy | Law 80/2025, Art 634-bis (Jun 2025) | 2 to 7 years for occupying a home by force | Prosecutor and police fast restoration (Art 321-bis) | Mostly public housing in big cities; confirm vacant possession at completion |
| Portugal | Law 67/2025 (Nov 2025) | Up to 2 years base, up to 3 aggravated, 1 to 4 professional | Judge can order immediate return during the investigation | Lower profile; reform recent, reach still being tested |
How likely is this, really?
The honest shape of the risk is a small probability attached to a high cost. Spain reports the most cases by far, yet they touch a fraction of one per cent of homes and cluster in a handful of districts. France, Italy, and Portugal carry lower public profiles, and much of Italy's total is public housing rather than the market a foreign buyer is shopping in. None of that means a property left standing empty and unwatched for months is a sensible idea. It means the rational response is to weigh your actual exposure by area and property type, rather than to write a country off or barricade the door.
What actually helps
Most of the sensible steps are the same across all four countries, and most cost very little.
Do not leave a property visibly empty
Overflowing post and a dark, still home for months is exactly what opportunists look for. Regular activity is the cheapest deterrent there is.
Fit an alarm and appoint a local keyholder
A monitored alarm, a solid door, and a neighbour, manager, or service who can notice a break-in and report it fast. Speed of reporting is what unlocks the quickest legal routes, Spain's 48-hour window above all.
Keep your documents out of the property
Hold your ownership papers yourself, not inside the home. Occupiers will not hand them back.
Let it out properly, or not at all
If you rent the property, use a formal contract and check a tenant's means carefully, since the slow, painful cases are usually non-paying tenants rather than break-ins.
Keep a paper trail
A live sale or rental listing, for instance, helps show the property was not abandoned if a dispute ever arises.
Two things buyers ask about regularly. Specialist anti-okupa legal-defence insurance exists in Spain for a modest annual sum and can cover legal and eviction costs, which is worth weighing for a property left empty part of the year. And the private "desokupa" firms that appear in the headlines, some staffed by former fighters, sit at the edge of the law: push too far and the firm itself can face coercion charges, so they are not a tidy fix and not a buyer's first port of call.
TPD Verdict
Squatting is a risk worth respecting, not the lottery the headlines suggest. It is statistically uncommon, heavily concentrated, and in none of these four countries does occupying a property transfer its ownership. The reforms of 2023 to 2025 have moved the law firmly towards owners, though the slow cases are usually non-paying former tenants rather than break-ins. The decisive step sits at the moment of buying: confirm who is in a property, and on what basis, before you sign.
Useful TPD Tools
Weigh a specific property, and see the law country by country:
Sources and References
- Spain, Organic Law 1/2025, Boletin Oficial del Estado, https://www.boe.es/eli/es/lo/2025/01/02/1 Last verified: 28 June 2026
- Spain, Criminal Code (Articles 202 and 245), Boletin Oficial del Estado, https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-1995-25444 Last verified: 28 June 2026
- Spain, illegal occupation statistics, Ministerio del Interior, https://estadisticasdecriminalidad.ses.mir.es/ Last verified: 28 June 2026
- Organised occupation reporting, OCCRP, https://www.occrp.org/en/news/organized-squatting-gangs-extort-owners-of-vacation-homes-in-spain Last verified: 28 June 2026
- France, Law 2023-668 and eviction procedure, Service-Public.gouv.fr, https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F35254 Last verified: 28 June 2026
- Italy, Law 80/2025 (Article 634-bis), Normattiva, https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:2025-06-09;80 Last verified: 28 June 2026
- Portugal, Law 67/2025, Diario da Republica, https://diariodarepublica.pt/dr/detalhe/lei/67-2025-950872040 Last verified: 28 June 2026
Buyer Intelligence Notice
This article provides general guidance based on publicly available regulatory information. It is indicative only and must not be considered legal, financial, immigration, or relocation advice. Actual costs, conditions, and requirements vary by location and individual circumstance. Regulations change. Always verify current requirements with qualified local professionals before making any purchasing decision.
The Property Drop provides buyer intelligence and educational research only. We do not act as an estate agent, intermediary, or advisor in any transaction, and we do not facilitate introductions, negotiations, or transactions. Always engage qualified independent professionals, including local lawyers, surveyors, architects, and tax advisors, for due diligence specific to your property.
