A man living in Tenerife had his bank account seized for a second time in March 2023 over a debt that had nothing to do ... with him. Four years earlier, a residents' association in Estepona had mistaken him for the heir of a deceased resident and pursued him for unpaid fees. He had never met the dead man or his children and the courts corrected the mistake in 2019.
Yet his name appeared again in enforcement proceedings, resulting in money being taken from his bank account, an overdraft and the withholding of his income tax refund to cover debts pursued through the Estepona courts.
The provincial court of Malaga has now ordered the residents' association to pay him 9,911.62 euros in compensation, including 9,000 euros for non-material damage, after the second mistake triggered anxiety and depression that required medical and psychological treatment.
In a ruling issued on 19 February 2026, the court overturned an earlier ruling, which had rejected his claim. It also ordered the property owners to pay interest and the legal costs of the first-instance proceedings.
The dispute began in April 2015, when the residents' association went to court to recover 3,280.21 euros in unpaid service charges from a property owner and his former partner. As the man had died in 2011, the proceedings continued against his estate, and the court needed to identify his children.
During that process, the former partner supplied incorrect details, some of which a police report partially corroborated. As a result, the claim was wrongly brought against the man who is now seeking compensation, even though he was neither the heir nor liable for the debt.
Correction of the error
The first seizure of his bank account took place in January 2019. The following month, the residents' association itself informed the court that it had mistaken his identity and asked it to correct the error. A court order in March rectified the mistake.
The provincial court has traced the original error to information supplied by third parties and therefore does not hold the property owners responsible for the consequences of that first enforcement action.
The situation arose again following a separate claim for unpaid service charges, launched in April 2021 against the deceased man's former partner and his estate. This time, the proceedings correctly identified his son. However, when the residents' association filed an enforcement application in November 2022, it once again supplied the name and national identity number of the man it had previously identified by mistake. This time, it sought 6,121.41 euros in principal, plus a further 1,800 to cover estimated interest and legal costs.
The court authorised enforcement in March 2023 and on 28 March 311.75 euros was taken from the man's bank account. Shortly afterwards, the bank informed him that his account was overdrawn by 196.73 euros and that he needed to bring it back into credit. He also received notification from the Spanish tax agency that the 29.13-euro tax refund due to him for his 2022 income tax return had been withheld to cover debts being pursued through the Estepona court.
The provincial court found that the episode had caused a "serious deterioration" in his mental health and subjected him to an ordeal lasting at least six months.
While trying to resolve the matter, the man sought help from the Canary Islands health service. A record dated 3 April noted that he was nervous, struggled to concentrate at work, slept poorly, suffered nightmares and felt like crying. Subsequent consultations documented how his condition worsened whenever he encountered something related to the seizures, such as calls from the bank about unpaid direct debits or having to explain what had happened to him.
In May, he reported panic attacks associated with visits to the bank or his lawyer. Doctors prescribed anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants.
On 8 May, the residents' association asked the court to correct the name, close the enforcement proceedings against him and lift the seizures, with the return of the money taken. Four days later, the man's legal representatives made the same request.
The court did not issue an order closing the proceedings against him until 6 October and even that order included his name in a request for him to identify sufficient assets to cover the debt, warning that he could face coercive fines.
Negligent conduct
The court that initially considered his compensation claim concluded that the matter resulted from a clerical transcription error and that the residents' association had acted diligently because it had asked for the mistake to be corrected before the man himself did so.
The provincial court rejects that reasoning. It says the property owners already knew the identity of the rightful heir and were aware that the man against whom they were pursuing enforcement had no connection to the debt.
The judges describe the association's conduct as "negligent, at the very least". An enforcement application that could lead directly to the seizure of bank accounts required particular care when identifying the debtor, they say. That was especially true given that the same mistake had already occurred and been corrected, a circumstance that called for "the utmost diligence in identifying the person concerned". The fact that the error was unintentional does not remove the obligation to compensate the person harmed by it.
The psychologist who treated the man recorded that what affected him most was having to face a second round of seizures that had no justification, leaving him fearful that they could happen again. The provincial court found that the incident had caused a "serious deterioration" in his mental health and put him through an ordeal lasting at least six months. It therefore awarded him the 9,000 euros he had claimed for non-material damage.
The court also recognised the costs of hiring a lawyer and court representative, which the residents' association had challenged on the grounds that it had already asked the court to correct the mistake. Given the "Kafkaesque situation in which the claimant found himself embroiled in the Estepona courts for a second time", the judges considered that legal representation had been necessary.
They also rejected the argument that the man should have had to recover the seized money through the court before he could receive compensation. Of the amount he claimed, the court deducted only the sum relating to the first seizure, for which it does not hold the property owners responsible.