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The Superior Court of Justice of Cantabria has ruled in favor of the owners of land expropriated for the construction of a road, after it was valued as rural land instead of urban land. Justice corrects this qualification, considering that it is urbanized land and raises the compensation to 76,304 euros.
According to the ruling of March 16, 2026, the conflict arose when the Provincial Jury of Forced Expropriation set the fair price for the expropriation of the property at 30,830 euros, understanding that it had a rural nature. The owners appealed that decision considering that the land had services, access and industrial use, so it should be valued as urbanized.
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The Forced Expropriation Jury considered that the land should be valued as rural land and defended its decision based on technical reports that granted it that nature, also applying the presumption of correctness of this type of administrative resolutions. However, the owners challenged this valuation, believing that it did not reflect the reality of the land or its effective use.
The TSJ corrects the valuation and increases the compensation for the expropriation
The Superior Court of Justice of Cantabria concluded that the land should be considered urbanized land and not rural land, based on both urban planning regulations and the physical reality of the plot. Specifically, it applied article 21 of the Consolidated Text of the Land and Urban Rehabilitation Law, which defines urbanized land as land integrated into an urban grid and provided with services such as road access, water or electricity.
Based on the evidence carried out, especially the judicial expert reports, the TSJ determined that the property met these requirements, being surrounded by buildings, having basic infrastructure and hosting industrial activity for decades. Furthermore, it took into account that even within the Expropriation Jury itself there was a dissenting vote that defended the same consideration of urban land, which weakened the presumption of correctness of the administrative assessment.
In application of the Civil Procedure Law, the court recalled that it is up to the person who challenges the fair price to prove the error, and considered that this burden of proof had been met by the owners. For this reason, it discarded the initial valuation as rural land and opted to apply the valuation method specific to urbanized land, specifically the static residual method provided for in article 37 of the Land Law.
Based on this criterion and the report of the judicial expert, the TSJ corrected the initial calculations and set a new fair price of 76,304 euros, more than double the amount recognized administratively. However, an appeal could be filed against the resolution before the Supreme Court.