Blog · Location checks

What the Consorcio pays after a DANA flood, and what stays with you

§ 1The search icon and the hazard layers

The first control to find in the ministry's flood viewer is the locate icon at the top of the screen. The ministry's help document says it accepts an address or a cadastral reference. We could not open the interactive viewer, so what follows about the screens comes from that help document and from the ministry's short guide. The help document is undated, and its only date is 22 September 2016, for the viewer's statistics. An icon may have moved since.

Take an invented house, number fourteen on Calle Ejemplo, in a town in Valencia province that we do not name. It floods only on this page. You type the address and the map moves, but nothing is shaded, because the flood layers have to be added. By the help document the route is the add-service button, then the water folder, then flood-risk management, then the folder of areas of significant potential flood risk, known by the initials ARPSI. The ministry's guide adds that the maps may also reach beyond the declared areas.

Inside that folder sit the hazard layers for return periods of ten, one hundred and five hundred years, and the guide labels them high, medium and low probability. A separate layer of river flood zones is listed in the help document with periods of ten, fifty, one hundred and five hundred years. Switch on one hazard layer, choose the identify tool and click inside the shaded patch. The help document says the viewer then shows the water depth in metres at that point.

§ 2Three readings of one map

We give no result for Calle Ejemplo 14, because the house does not exist. Here is how each outcome would read.

Outside every layer

If the address sits outside every layer, you have a first filter and nothing more. The ministry's guide does not say that a result is an official ruling on one property, and it says each layer has its own update date. The guide mentions a last full upload on 21 February 2020, so read the layer's own date in the viewer. The weather agency's report on the October 2024 episode records flash floods and ravine floods reaching coastal towns where hardly any rain fell. A map of watercourses may not show that story, so ask the town hall about the street itself. The note on what to look for on the plot and the access road lists the questions.

Inside the widest layer only

If the address sits inside only the layer with the lowest probability, the flood is a rare case on the map. Use the identify tool to read the depth and compare it with the height of your doorstep, the ground floor and any basement.

Inside the high-probability layer

If the address sits inside the high-probability layer, read the depth, then read it again after you have asked the neighbours. The viewer gives a modelled depth. The neighbours give a memory of a street.

A second map for Valencian buyers

Buyers in the Valencian Community have a second map. The Generalitat publishes its own flood-hazard layer, PATRICOVA, on its open-data portal, with a public viewer. The portal describes six hazard levels, numbered from the most to the least hazardous, plus a geomorphological level. We did not read the plan's rules, so we cannot say what each level allows an owner to build or repair. Ask the town hall and an architect which level applies and what it means for the home.

On 20 October 2026 the Valencian government presented the first phase of a revision of PATRICOVA, its flood-risk plan, according to press reports; we did not read the Generalitat’s text. In the municipalities studied in detail, the mapped flood-hazard area would rise by well over half. The revision is not approved: publication in the regional gazette will open a public information period. The proposals include raising new and rebuilt homes above flood level and limiting new building and underground parking in the highest-hazard areas. Until it is approved, the map in force is the one on the Generalitat’s portal, so ask the town hall and an architect which level applies to the home.

A second DANA, named Adam, hit the Safor and Marina Alta in the provinces of Valencia and Alicante between 16 and 19 October 2026. Press reports give exceptional rainfall, at least five deaths and more than two thousand people evacuated. The Government announced that it would declare the affected municipalities a seriously affected zone, and the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros had received about thirteen thousand claims by 25 October. We have not read the official figures, and we did not check how the declaration interacts with the Consorcio’s exclusions, so do not assume that cover is affected either way. If you are looking at a home near a ravine on this coast, ask the seller whether it flooded in October 2026 and check the national flood viewer, the regional hazard map and the town hall’s records.

A draft royal decree on flood risk, put out for public consultation by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition from 16 July to 16 September 2026, would tighten building in flood zones and would require the owner to declare in each transfer whether the property lies in a flood zone, with a note in the Land Registry. As drafted, the registry could not record the transfer without the declaration. It is a draft: as of mid October 2026 press reports said it had not been approved, and we have not seen a final text. Ask your lawyer whether the property is in a mapped flood zone and whether the nota simple carries any note.

None of this changes the cover rules below. In the texts we read, the Consorcio's cover does not depend on a mapped flood zone: the conditions are a qualifying policy, the surcharge paid and the waiting period. The wider checks on a plot are in the wider checks on flood, fire and coast.

§ 3Who the Consorcio pays, and when

The Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros is a state body, and its statute says it pays an insured who has paid the surcharge in two situations: when the extraordinary risk is not covered by the policy at all, or when the insurer cannot pay because of insolvency or a liquidation that the Consorcio runs. The same statute says its obligation reaches only the same persons, goods and sums insured as the policy. You do not buy this cover from the Consorcio. Insurers must collect the surcharge together with the premium.

The regulation lists policies for fire and natural events and for other damage to property, and it leaves out combined agricultural, transport and construction policies. It does not name a home policy, so a home policy falls in only if it holds those covers. For the conditions in brief, read the shorter note on the Consorcio's cover. This post adds what the regulation and the clause say on limits.

The surcharge is a rate on the insured capital. The 2018 tariff gives homes and residential communities 0.07 per mil a year, applied to the combined value of everything insured under the risks the Consorcio covers, building and contents together. Our arithmetic, on an invented capital of €200,000: divide by one thousand to get 200, multiply by 0.07, and the surcharge comes to €14 a year. The line for homes is a single rate, and in the part we read it carries no adjustment for where the street is. Insurers collect the surcharge inside the premium, so the receipt is where you check it.

We read the surcharge resolution of 2018 in its consolidated text, which includes a modifying resolution of 30 December 2025. The changes we read concern vehicles, civil works and business-interruption periods, not homes.

§ 4What counts as an extraordinary flood

The regulation defines the inundación extraordinaria in one long sentence. It is the flooding of land caused directly by rainwater, snowmelt, or by lakes with a natural outlet, rivers or natural surface watercourses that burst their normal banks, and by sea surges on the coast. The sentence sets no rainfall or flow threshold. A wind loss follows a different test, and the 2018 clause we read puts the wind line at gusts above 120 km/h. The Madrid consumer service says that since April 2025 the Consorcio also treats sustained strong winds as covered, under an information circular we did not read.

The same sentence then takes things out. It excludes water from dams, canals, sewers, collectors and other man-made underground channels that burst, break or fail for reasons that are not themselves extraordinary risks covered by the Consorcio. It also excludes rain that falls directly on the insured property, and rain collected by its roof, its drainage network or its patios. Read that twice if the home has a basement or a patio below street level. On our reading, a downpour that fills a patio from above and a stream that leaves its bed and comes through the door are different things in this text. The first is for the ordinary policy to deal with, if it deals with it at all. When a street floods from rain running off the hills, the sentence raises the question of which side of the line that water falls on, and we cannot settle it from the text.

Rising groundwater, landslides, subsidence and rockfalls are excluded unless rain causes an extraordinary flood at the same time. Damage from an inherent defect or from manifest lack of maintenance is excluded too, and for a buyer that points at the drains, the retaining walls and the roof, and at whether the seller kept them up.

§ 5What stays with you

The excess

Start with the good news for a homeowner. The clause sets an excess, the franquicia, of seven per cent of the indemnifiable damage on property, and then says no deduction applies to damage affecting homes, residential communities or cars insured under a motor policy. The text does not say whether contents, a second home or a holiday let count as a home for that purpose. That goes on your list of questions.

The sum insured

The bigger risk is the suma asegurada, the sum insured. The Consorcio's cover reaches the same goods and the same sums as the ordinary policy. If the sum insured is lower than the value of what is insured when the loss happens, the regulation pays the damage in the same proportion that the sum bears to the value. The insurance contract law has the same rule for ordinary losses. Here is our arithmetic, with invented figures.

In case B the sum is two thirds of the value, so the payment is two thirds of the damage. The figures are invented and ignore the extras below. The regulation lets pacts such as replacement-value cover carry over from the ordinary policy, and it does not define replacement value, so ask which basis your schedule uses. The note on how to read a policy schedule line by line shows where to look.

The extras

Then the extras. Removing mud, demolition, clearing debris and carrying it to an authorised tip count as damage to the building, and disposing of damaged contents counts as damage to the contents. The regulation caps the joint payment for these costs at four per cent of the sum insured, and applies the proportional rule to the capped amount. On an invented building sum of €180,000, our sum gives €7,200. The regulation also leaves out the cost of cleaning public channels, canals, reservoirs and ditches, drainage works on infrastructure, and the fees of any professional you hire to assess the damage.

Two more lines can leave a cost with you. Indirect losses are excluded, apart from a loss-of-profits cover aimed at businesses, so ask the insurer whether anything pays for a rented flat while the house dries out. And the statute excludes a loss that the Government qualifies as a national catastrophe or calamity. We did not read how the Government declares one.

§ 6The waiting period, and a completion in October

The waiting period, the plazo de carencia, is seven calendar days. The policy must have been issued, or have taken effect if later, that long before the loss, or the natural-event cover does not respond. Take an invented purchase. You complete on Monday 2 November and the policy starts the same day. A flood on Thursday 5 November falls inside the period, so the Consorcio would not pay for it, whatever the surcharge on the receipt says.

The regulation lists exceptions: a replacement policy with no gap in cover, the part of the sums that comes from an automatic revaluation, and a case where the insurance could not have been taken out earlier because there was no insurable interest. We do not know how the Consorcio applies the third exception to a buyer between the private contract and the deed. Ask the insurer and the lawyer well before the completion date.

§ 7How a claim runs

The clause says the claim can be notified to the Consorcio by the policyholder, the insured or the beneficiary, by a representative, or by the insurer or the broker who arranged the policy. It names a telephone service and the Consorcio's website as the channels, and the same channels give the state of a claim. The Consorcio values the damage itself and is not bound by the figure the insurer reached. It pays the beneficiary by bank transfer.

The clause as we read it gives no number of days for notifying the Consorcio. We do have a deadline from another text. The insurance contract law gives seven days to tell your insurer after you learn of a loss, so work to that. Keep the damaged items until the expert has been, and keep photographs, as the regional consumer service that summarises the Consorcio's rules advises. The steps in the steps and deadlines of a home claim apply to the ordinary side of the same loss.

We found no payment deadline for the Consorcio. The statute says claims in which it acts as insurer follow the insurance contract law, but we could not tell whether the ordinary payment periods apply to a home flood claim. Ask.

§ 8The ordinary policy and the mortgage

Your insurer pays what the policy covers, and the Consorcio takes the extraordinary part that the policy leaves out. The questionnaire matters here: the insurance contract law expects an honest description of the risk, and the insurer may rescind within one month of learning that a declaration was wrong. If the street has flooded before and the form asks, say so. Our note on your duties under an insurance policy sets out that duty.

If you borrow, the mortgage law lets the lender require a damage policy on the mortgaged home. It must accept another provider's policy with equivalent conditions, at signing and at each renewal, without worsening the loan or charging for the comparison. It must also give you the conditions of the cover it asks for in writing. Ask for that paper before you shop for a policy, so the quote you collect matches what the lender will accept.

We could not read the articles of the Mortgage Law on insurance money for a mortgaged home, because our reading tool cut the text off before them. So we cannot say who receives the payment, or what the lender may do with it, if the house is damaged. The Consorcio's clause says it pays the beneficiary of the insurance, and the policy names who that is.

§ 9What we could not read

Our tools could not open the Consorcio's own website or the interactive viewer, so the rules above come from the texts printed in the state gazette. We did not read any insurer's policy wording, the Mortgage Law articles on insurance money, or the plan behind the Valencian hazard levels. We saw only the title of a Generalitat news item announcing a preliminary consultation on revising that plan, so we do not know its date or content. We found no official text on whether private insurers decline or load homes on mapped flood streets, so we cannot say whether the ordinary part of the policy will be available.

§ 10The questions to put in writing

To the insurer, before you pay a deposit on the home:

• Does the policy carry the Consorcio surcharge, and where does the receipt show it?
• What is the sum insured for the building and the contents, and how did you calculate the rebuild cost?
• What does the ordinary policy pay for water that enters from above, from drains or from a patio?
• Is there an excess on any part of a flood claim, and does the clause's exemption for homes cover my contents, a second home or a let?
• When does the cover start for a completion on a given date, and how does the waiting period apply to me?
• Does anything pay for temporary housing while the house is uninhabitable?
• Will you write a policy for this address, with any flood exclusion or extra premium, and can you confirm the terms in writing?

To the lawyer, who should act for you alone:

• Which flood layers and regional levels place this plot, and what does the town hall's planning file say about them?
• Has the seller made a claim, and can the contract require the policy history and the community policy to be handed over?
• What does the mortgage deed say about insurance, and who receives an indemnity if the home is damaged?
• Does the contract allow a walk-away or a price adjustment if the survey finds that the drains or retaining walls were neglected?

Most of those answers come from the checks a lawyer runs before you sign, and why the lawyer should act for you alone explains why the lawyer should be yours and not the seller's or the agent's. Keep every written answer with the purchase papers. If one is missing, treat it as unknown.

Dotted underline marks an illustrative figure. It shows how a calculation works and is not a quote, a rate or a forecast.

General information only. This is not legal, tax or financial advice. Check your own situation with a qualified adviser.