The nota simple in Spain — what every field tells a buyer

A nota simple summarises what Spain's property register holds about one property: who owns it and what is charged against it. It proves none of that conclusively and says nothing about the building. It costs €9.02 plus IVA per property from the Colegio de Registradores.

What it is, and what it is not

The Spanish property register (Registro de la Propiedad) records who owns each property and what is charged against it. A nota simple informativa is the cheap, fast extract of what it currently holds for one property.

Reglamento Hipotecario art. 332.5 defines it exactly:

«La nota simple informativa consistirá tan sólo en un extracto sucinto del contenido de los asientos vigentes relativos a la finca objeto de manifestación, donde conste la identificación de la misma, la identidad del titular o titulares de derechos inscritos sobre la misma y la extensión, naturaleza y limitaciones de éstos.»

And then, in the same paragraph, the sentence that decides how much weight it carries:

«Dicha nota tiene valor puramente informativo y no da fe del contenido de los asientos.»

Purely informative, and it does not attest to the content of the entries. That is the register's own description of its own document. Anybody who tells you a nota simple proves ownership is overstating it.

An annotated example

Below is a nota simple we invented. It describes no real property, no real person issued it, and every identifier in it is deliberately built so that its check characters do not work out. We made it rather than redacting a real one for two reasons: reuse of register content for commercial exploitation is restricted, and a real document carries only whatever happens to be wrong with one house. An invented one can carry every instructive defect at once.

Read the same document as a plain list

Datos registrales / Register identifiers – Registro / Registry office

Registro de la Propiedad de Torreseca núm. 2

Datos registrales / Register identifiers – Finca / Property number

18.472

Datos registrales / Register identifiers – CRU / Unique registry code

29081000472119

Datos registrales / Register identifiers – Referencia catastral / Cadastral reference

4721905VK4742S0007MM

Datos registrales / Register identifiers – Fecha de expedición / Date issued

14 de agosto de 2026, 11:42

Descripción de la finca / Description of the property – Naturaleza / Kind of property

Vivienda unifamiliar entre medianeras, con patio posterior

Descripción de la finca / Description of the property – Situación / Location

Calle del Almendro, 14, Torreseca

Descripción de la finca / Description of the property – Superficie / Floor area, as registered

112 m² construidos, 84 m² útiles

Descripción de la finca / Description of the property – Superficie catastral / Floor area, at the cadastre

134 m² construidos

Descripción de la finca / Description of the property – Coordinación gráfica / Graphical coordination

Finca NO COORDINADA gráficamente con el Catastro

Titularidad / Ownership – Titular / Registered owner

Juan Alberto Peral Montoya, NIE X-0000000-X, y Ana María Ferreiro Lastra, NIE Y-0000000-Y

Titularidad / Ownership – Participación / Share held

100% del pleno dominio, con carácter ganancial

Titularidad / Ownership – Título / How they acquired it

Compraventa, escritura de 9 de marzo de 2024, notario de Torreseca

Titularidad / Ownership – Inscripción / Entry

Inscripción 6ª, tomo 2.114, libro 344, folio 91

Cargas / Charges and encumbrances – Hipoteca / Mortgage

Hipoteca a favor de una entidad de crédito. Principal 96.000 euros. Inscripción 7ª, de 9 de marzo de 2024. NO CANCELADA

Cargas / Charges and encumbrances – Servidumbre / Easement

Servidumbre de paso a favor de la finca registral 18.473, sobre una franja de 1,20 m en el linde norte del patio

Cargas / Charges and encumbrances – Embargo / Seizure

Anotación preventiva de embargo, letra A, ordenada en procedimiento de apremio. Importe reclamado 7.480 euros. Practicada el 9 de febrero de 2026

Cargas / Charges and encumbrances – Afección fiscal / Tax charge

Finca afecta al pago de la liquidación complementaria que pueda girarse por el impuesto de transmisiones, durante cinco años desde la fecha de la nota al margen

Nota final / Final note – Advertencia / Statutory wording

La presente nota simple informativa tiene valor puramente informativo y no da fe del contenido de los asientos, sin perjuicio de la certificación registral, único medio de acreditar fehacientemente el contenido del Registro

Nota final / Final note – Our reading, and not part of the document

Three live financial charges and one easement. None of them goes away because the seller says it has been dealt with.

Field by field

Registro, finca, CRU

The office that holds the record, the number of the property inside that office, and the Código Registral Único, the code that identifies the property nationally. A normal value is a number. An alarming value is no value: if the seller or the agent cannot give you the finca number, nobody can search for the property, and that is the first thing to fix.

Referencia catastral

The cadastral reference. It belongs to the Catastro, not to the register, which is why it is worth learning what a cadastral reference is. It is the key you use to look the property up yourself, at no cost, on the Sede Electrónica del Catastro. A normal value is present and matches the address. An alarming value is a blank one.

Descripción de la finca

What the property is, where it is, and how large the register believes it to be. The register's own words, not an estate agent's. What to watch is the surface area, because there are two of them and they can disagree. More on that below.

One note on the example above: the superficie catastral row is marked as coming from the cadastre, and it is placed beside the register's own figure so that the two can be compared. It is not part of a nota simple. You will not find that line on your own, and you look the cadastral figure up separately.

Titularidad

Who owns it, on what share, and how they came to own it. What to check is that the name on this line is the name of the person selling to you. If the seller is a company, if there are four owners and only one is negotiating, or if the property was inherited and the entry has never been updated, none of that stops a sale by itself. Each is a question for your lawyer before you pay a deposit.

Cargas

The section that decides the purchase. A normal value is an empty section, or a mortgage the seller has already arranged to cancel at completion. An alarming value is anything you do not recognise, and in particular anything with a figure attached. What to do is read every entry to the end: each one names the date it was made, the entry number it sits at, and whether it has been cancelled. The word that matters most in this section is cancelada, and its absence is what binds the property. Each type of entry is set out below.

The final note

Every nota simple ends with wording stating that it is informative and that the certificación registral is the form that attests to the register's content. It is boilerplate, and it is the most important boilerplate on the page.

Cargas — the section that decides the purchase

A carga attaches to the property, not to its owner. That is the single sentence to carry away. It changes hands with the property, and a seller's assurance that something "has been dealt with" has no effect on what the register says.

• Hipoteca: a mortgage. Paying a loan off does not remove it. Somebody has to pay for the cancellation to be registered, and until they do the entry stands.
• Embargo: a seizure noted by a court or a public body that is owed money. This is what gov.uk means when it tells you to check for debts.
• Servidumbre: an easement. It belongs to the neighbouring property rather than to a neighbour, so it survives every sale. Read the width and the boundary it names.
• Afección fiscal: a note that the property itself answers for any further transfer-tax assessment for a stated period. It is routine after a recent sale and it is not a bill you can pay off.
• Condición resolutoria: a condition allowing a previous seller to undo the sale if instalments go unpaid. Rare, and serious when present.

A nota simple is not a title deed

English has no clean equivalent, and the three candidates all mislead:

| If you were told | It actually is | The closer Spanish word | |---|---|---| | "It is the title deed" | Wrong. It is a summary of the register, issued by the registrar | escritura pública de compraventa | | "It is an official copy of the register" | Wrong. It is informative and does not attest to the entries | certificación registral | | "It is like a Land Registry title register" | Close in purpose, wrong in effect. The document that attests is a different one and costs more | certificación registral |

The escritura pública is the deed you sign in front of the notario. The certificación registral is the certified form of the register's content, and it is the one that attests. The Colegio de Registradores publishes no flat price for one, saying only that the cost depends on the tariff items the registry has to apply. Those items sit in Real Decreto 1427/1989, Anexo I, Número 4.1, where a certificación de dominio is 9.015182 euros and a certificación de cargas is 24.040484 euros before tax.

What a nota simple does not tell you

• Nothing about the condition of the building. Not the roof, not the damp, not the wiring. Only a survey does that, and the routes are compared on who checks a Spanish property.
• Nothing about community debts. Unpaid comunidad de propietarios charges do not appear here. They come from a certificate the community itself issues.
• Nothing about whether a licence was ever granted. Planning status lives at the town hall, not at the register.
• Nothing about whether the register agrees with the cadastre, except when it explicitly says it does not. On the example above, one line reads "finca NO COORDINADA gráficamente con el Catastro", and the two surface areas differ by 22 m². Both are real records of the same house. Neither is automatically wrong. That gap is a question for a lawyer before you sign.

If the vocabulary here is unfamiliar, every term is in the glossary, and the moment these checks actually matter is set out on the deposit contract.

Where you get one, and what it costs

The official channel is the Colegio de Registradores, which supplies the document online. The Colegio de Registradores publishes €9.02 per property, and states that the amounts it publishes do not include applicable taxes. It quotes an average delivery time of under two hours. A continuous-information version, which keeps telling you about changes for a period rather than giving one snapshot, is published at €12.03 per property before tax by the Colegio de Registradores.

Two figures often get conflated, and the difference is worth knowing. The registrar's own tariff item for a nota simple is 3.005061 euros per property, set in Real Decreto 1427/1989, Anexo I, Número 4.1.f. The rest of the online price is the cost of supplying it electronically, which the Resolución de la DGRN de 27 de julio de 2005 explains and authorises. Anyone quoting the tariff figure as the price you pay online is quoting the wrong one of the two.

The full route comparison, including what the resellers add and when paying more is genuinely worth it, is on the Spanish land registry. What the purchase as a whole looks like is on buying property in Spain.

What this page does not cover

It does not tell you how to read your own nota simple, because we have not seen it and we do not look documents up. It does not cover the escritura, the cadastre in detail, or planning status. And it does not tell you whether a particular charge on a particular property is a problem for you.

We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. Before you commit money, instruct an independent lawyer who acts only for you.