The Government counts 20,055 temples and 14,906 estates legally registered by the Church thanks to the Aznar reform

The Government already has the first clear photograph of the assets that the Church owns in Spain thanks to the reform of José María Aznar, after years of controversy over the way in which it had registered (registered for the first time) some of them, such as the Mosque of Córdoba or the Giralda of Seville, as well as cathedrals and other properties that are not temples, but buildings and farms.

The report that this Tuesday reaches the Council of Ministers, to be later sent to Congress, gives the figures: the Church registered a total of 34,961 farms between 1998 and 2015, the legal parenthesis that opened a law of the Government of the PP of José María Aznar so you could do it with a certification.

Of these, 20,014 are temples or complementary dependencies and 14,947, farms "with other destinations (land, plots, houses, premises, etc.)", the report details, according to sources who have had access to it.

More specifically, the key figure at the center of the controversy is the following: the vast majority, a total of 30,335 properties, have been registered with an ecclesiastical certification, as recorded in the corresponding simple notes, and in 4,626 properties the registration has been carried out on the basis of "a different title".

[See the list of all properties registered by the Church].

The Vice President of the Government, Carmen Calvo, spoke of the report at the press conference of the Council of Ministers and stressed that those 30,335 registered properties “have been registered by virtue of ecclesiastical certification, which the amendment of the 1996 law allowed in the mortgage law is what has made it possible that with the faith of the corresponding ecclesiastical authority these registrations could be made under the protection of legality ”.

"Disagreeing or not with what led to Aznar's reform, it occurs in light of legality," he pointed out.

"Now that legality can be answered, as is logical, and it will be the way of the courts (...) if you disagree with the knowledge that today will be had of that list."

In video, the Vice President of the Government opens the way to claim the unregistered assets of the Church (EFE)

The final report, to which this newspaper has had access, goes further and concludes that “from the reports collected from the Official College of Property and Mercantile Registrars of Spain in this regard, it must be understood that the properties unregistered in favor of the Church Catholic, through the procedure of article 206, they had the necessary material title in their favor ”.

Now, from this moment on, whoever doubts it can claim them, be it the State in the case of assets of alleged public domain or a private person, although they will have to present documentation that proves it.

The report emphasizes that the regulations have established that mere certification with the bishop's signature was not enough, but that it should contain, in any case, "an indication of the title of acquisition or the way in which the goods whose registration was concerned were acquired."

In a first version of the report, to which this newspaper has had access, it also concluded: "Consequently, it cannot be said that the assets or real rights registered in favor of the Church lacked a material acquisition title."

This is the aspect highlighted by the general secretary of the Episcopal Conference (CEE), Luis Argüello: “We are pleased with the recognition that they have made in the report itself that the Church has followed the legality in carrying out this registration criterion.

It is true that there were also two years after each registration act so that people with better rights or institutions could claim ownership of those assets.

In any case, the Church does not want anything that is not its own to be in its name, so if someone came with a better right and could review the registration made, each institution of the church that has registered, is willing to do that review if the law allows it and the requirements of the law ask us to do so ”.

The bishops have just produced a document, entitled

Church Registration A Privilege?

, in which he explains his point of view: “The Church is made up in Spain by more than 40,000 institutions, legally registered, and with the capacity to own property.

Each of these institutions can have its assets to carry out the mission entrusted to them.

They can do it like any other civil, social, sports, scientific, academic institution that attends the public space and works in the fabric of society ”.

He argues that the laws prevented the Church "and this was the case until 1998, from unregistering the temples (churches and hermitages) because the property was evident and those temples could not be traded."

“It is from this moment when it begins to register its assets to guarantee the identity, purpose and use of these properties.

The Church exercises the right to unregister its assets because it has the obligation to safeguard and maintain what has been entrusted to it ”, he concludes.

It clarifies that “in order to register a property in the Property Registry, it is necessary to prove the property title, or to carry out a domain file, or by certification.

(...) The registration of the goods does not grant ownership.

The registry, and therefore the registration, simply has a probatory or certifying function, which provides legal certainty, but does not have a constitutive function of ownership ”.

The State Coordinator for the Recovery of the Heritage Unregistered by the Church is critical, for the moment, with what has become known from the report, "which is too late."

Jorge García, one of its spokesmen, believes that it is “absolutely contradictory” that the report indicates that there are titles behind the certifications of Church assets, “when the registrations have been with a diocesan self-certification, simply with the affirmation of the bishop, without providing any title ”.

“Precisely the registrations are made without providing title of ownership or domain, using article 206, which equates the Church to an institution of public law, and 304 of the mortgage regulations, which enables bishops to have the legal capacity to act as notaries. , something that is unconstitutional.

That is why we ask that they be null and void due to unconstitutionality ”.

On the other hand, García recalls that, in any case, this list of Church assets is "partial", because it does not include all the properties that were already registered, not in the past and during the Franco regime, but as of 1978 and until 1998. "Here in Zaragoza, where I live, most of the Church's assets are from the eighties, irrigated fields, labor fields, flats, frontons ... They are not on that list."

This coordinator, who reproaches the Government of Pedro Sánchez for never wanting to receive them, asks "to find a legislative solution, because the judicial one is very difficult, it would be necessary to go case by case."

The Government has taken three years to produce this report.

During this time, he has remained hidden despite the fact that the Council for Transparency and Good Government (CTBG) urged him to publish the list in September 2019 after a request from EL PAÍS, a decision that the Ministry of Justice appealed in the National Court, which gave him the reason.

Carmen Calvo has specified that "we have not wanted and cannot ignore" the mandate of Congress to write this report, "but quite the opposite, to shed transparency on this situation."

"It is not an easy list, the complexity of the time it has required, but it has finally been transferred to Congress today," he concluded.

The Catholic Church registered tens of thousands of real estate in his name in the property registers since in 1946 the mortgage law allowed to unregister any parcel or building without presenting documentation that proves its ownership, only with the signature of the bishop, such as churches, hermitages, cathedrals, but also squares, parish houses, pediments and cemeteries.

Three years ago it emerged that between 1998 and 2015 the Church registered more than 30,000 farms, according to the list that the College of Registrars delivered to the Government in February 2018.

Town councils and individuals were waiting for the report to be made public to verify what assets are included and to initiate, if they consider it appropriate, lawsuits to try to recover the property.

Experts believe that there will be numerous lawsuits throughout Spain.

In many municipalities it is unknown whether assets that had always belonged to the people without being in the name of anyone have been unregistered.

Some registrations have already caused conflicts.

To the best known, that of the Cathedral Mosque of Córdoba, there are dozens of problematic cases.

The list was drawn up in compliance with a non-legislative proposal of Congress that the PSOE presented in 2017, when it was in the opposition, and that was approved with the votes against the PP and Ciudadanos.

That text urged the Government to prepare a list of all unregistered assets since 1998, the date on which the Executive of José María Aznar reformed the Mortgage Law to further facilitate these registry entries.

According to the PSOE, “the reform that allowed the Catholic Church to rapase a huge number of properties for which it also does not pay any tribute, responded to a triple purpose, adaptation to legal reforms, accommodation of the exercise of the function of the Registrar to the new needs and regulation of figures lacking an updated registry regulation, all of which were in no way related to the use that the Catholic Church, in a clear abuse of law, has made of this modification ”.

The report was the first step for hypothetical subsequent claims, if it was found that the registrations had been made without a material and prior title that justified the ownership of the right over the property or if it was in the public domain.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on this mechanism in 2014 and considered "surprising, to say the least, that a certificate issued by the Bishop's general secretary can have the same value as certificates issued by public officials."

He also questioned that the prerogative referred only to the bishops of the Catholic Church and excluded representatives of other religions.

The non-law proposal gave six months to deliver the list.

They were not fulfilled, but the Government of Mariano Rajoy carried out all the procedures to request the information from the property registrars.

The report reached the Ministry of Justice on February 6, 2018, the date on which the College of Registrars forwarded it to the Executive.

Now it finally comes to light.