I have a problem with my landlord, my rent or an eviction. Where do I get free help?

Go to your district’s Oficina de l’Habitatge, the council’s Housing Office. The advice is free, it is personal, and it includes a lawyer. There are eleven offices, and they handle rent disputes, contract questions, deposits, rent-cap breaches, harassment by a landlord, grants towards rent, and evictions.

If you have received court paperwork about an eviction, go today

Once you are served with an eviction claim for unpaid rent you have ten days to do one of four things:

• Leave.
• Pay.
• Pay everything owed to stop the case.
• Appear and formally oppose it.

If you do nothing within those ten days the court ends the case and the eviction goes ahead on the exact day and hour already fixed, with no further notice to you. That is article 438.5 of the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil. And there is a shorter deadline inside it: if you want free legal aid you must ask for it within three days of being served. Three days, not ten. The Housing Office is where both clocks are handled.

Does this apply to me

Yes. The Housing Offices serve everyone living in Barcelona and nothing on this page depends on your immigration status. They also advise landlords and owners’ communities, so do not assume the office is “not for tenants”. If your problem is a mortgage rather than rent, the same offices run Ofideute, the mortgage-debt service.

What it costs

Free. The council’s wording is that the housing information and advisory service for citizens of Barcelona is free and personalised. Calling 010 is free from within the metropolitan area. So is the emergency line below.

What to bring

• Your rental contract with all annexes.
• Any court paperwork in full, including the envelope and the date you received it.
• Receipts or bank records for the rent you have paid.
• Any letter, burofax, WhatsApp message or email from the landlord or agency.
• Your identity document and, if you have it, a volant de convivència, the council certificate showing who lives at your address.

Bring the documents to the adviser handling your case, and do not post your lease or someone else’s contact details in a group chat.

Where to go, and how to book

The phone for all eleven offices is 010.

Opening hours

Monday to Friday 08:30–14:30. From October to April there is also a Thursday evening, until 18:30. Between 1 May and 30 Sep the hours are Monday to Friday 08:30–14:30 with no Thursday evening, so if you are reading this in September do not plan on a Thursday afternoon. The Zona Nord office closes at 14:30 all year.

Booking

An appointment is recommended, and is booked online through the council’s Oficina Virtual at seuelectronica.ajuntament.barcelona.cat, procedure 20200001396, or by calling 010. To see the legal adviser you must request that appointment in person at any Housing Office. If you are about to lose your home tonight, call CUESB, the council’s emergency centre, on the free number 900 703 030; its team can arrange temporary emergency accommodation.

How long it takes

Booking an appointment is minutes. The deadlines are what will not wait: three days to ask for free legal aid, ten days to answer the claim.

What happens next

Going to the office is not only advice — it is how the system finds out you are in trouble.

• The office can open rent mediation between you and the landlord, to keep you in the home and deal with the arrears.
• SIPHO supports households already in an eviction process and negotiates right up to the eviction date.
• The office starts the application to the Mesa d’Emergències, the emergency housing board that can rehouse people at imminent risk.
• You may qualify for the emergency benefit for loss of home, a payment for people in an eviction process.

And in court, if the home is your main residence, the judge must tell you that public housing and social services exist and must notify them of your case itself, without you asking.

The suspension, and the test behind it

If the court confirms your household is economically vulnerable it can suspend the case:

The test has two limbs and you need both:

• Rent plus electricity, gas, water and telecoms must come to more than 30% of household income.
• That income must fall below three times the monthly IPREM, the public income index.

With additions of:

• 0.3 times IPREM per dependent child
• 0.35 for a single-parent household or a child with a disability of 33% or more
• 0.2 per household member over 65 or dependent

Do not work this out alone; the office does it with you.

What goes wrong

• People wait. They wait for the landlord to calm down, or for a friend’s cousin who “knows a lawyer”, or until they have the money. The ten-day window is the whole case: miss it and there is no hearing, no argument and no second letter, only the fixed date.
• The second thing that goes wrong is paying a gestor (a private paid paperwork agent, not a public office) or a “housing adviser” for something the Housing Office does for nothing.

Useful words

Read next

• What can a landlord legally charge me before I move in, and how do I avoid a rental scam? — the four-month ceiling and the papers you are owed.
• How do I register on the padrón? Do I need papers? — your registered address decides which of the eleven offices is yours.
• What is 010, and what can it actually do for me? — the free line that books the appointment.

Official source

Barcelona City Council, “Barcelona Housing Offices”, at barcelona.cat/habitatge, for the office network, the hours and the free service catalogue. The eviction deadlines and the suspension test are articles 438.5 and 441.5 to 441.7 of the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil, consolidated text at boe.es.