What the figure measures — and what it does not
The CGPJ counts evictions actually carried out, not claims filed. In the Canaries there were 95 of them in the first quarter of 2026.
Across Spain the same statistics record 4,005 evictions carried out, 45.4 percent fewer than a year earlier, of which about 2,600 arose from tenancies. The Canary fall is therefore far steeper — but it rests on numbers so small that a few dozen cases move the percentage sharply. An eviction carried out in the first quarter of 2026 also belongs to a case that began months or years earlier.
The step before the eviction
Since Law 12/2023 on the right to housing, the Spanish code of civil procedure (LEC) contains an intermediate step: under art. 441.5, the court notifies the competent social services of its own motion as soon as a claim concerns a household's habitual home. They have a maximum of ten days to assess vulnerability. If they confirm it, the proceedings are suspended for up to two months when the claimant is a private individual and up to four when it is a legal person; afterwards they resume automatically, even if no alternative housing has been found. These periods are given by Baker Tilly and by the bar council CVCA.
A second step applies only to large holders: under arts. 439.6 and 439.7 LEC the claim must state whether the claimant is a "gran tenedor", and such a claimant suing a vulnerable tenant must show it first went through official conciliation. An owner of one or two dwellings does not have to.
The shield that failed twice in 2026
To be distinguished from that is the extraordinary "escudo social", the suspension of evictions renewed every year since 2020. It is not currently in force, after two failed attempts: on 27 January 2026 Congress repealed Real Decreto-ley 16/2025; the government followed on 3 February with Real Decreto-ley 2/2026 (BOE no. 31 of 4 February), which extended the suspension to the end of 2026 and for the first time exempted landlords owning two or fewer dwellings. On 26 February Congress rejected that decree too.
This matters, because summaries with wrong dates are in circulation: the decree is dated 3 February 2026, not June, and it no longer applies. What remains is the ordinary suspension under the LEC, as the firms Buades Legal and Consulting DMS both note.
The route for a small landlord
The sequence is described by the lawyer Lázaro Héctor Amable Méndez of ALY Abogados on 13 June 2026; the timings are his practical estimate, not official figures. It begins with a formal demand for payment, usually by burofax, at least 30 days before the claim: this cuts off the tenant's "enervación", the right to stop the eviction by paying up. The claim then proceeds under art. 250.1.1 LEC.
If vulnerability is invoked, the court brings in the social services; ALY Abogados allows one to three months for that. A decree then sets the hearing and eviction dates, with the day and hour specified since Law 12/2023; the physical eviction follows two to five weeks later. In total: three to six months without a vulnerability claim, six to twelve with one.
Two readings of the same fall
Canarias7 attributes the fall "largely" to the social protection and vulnerability protocols. The Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) disagrees: across Spain, evictions requested rose by 19.2 percent in the same quarter and mortgage enforcement proceedings begun by 17.5 percent. Only 1.8 percent of suspended evictions ended in a housing solution, on their count; for the rest they suspect "invisible evictions" with no court file.
The firm Roda Abogados of Las Palmas reads the same situation from the landlord's side: in February 2026 it welcomed the decree's removal of owners of two or fewer dwellings from the shield, arguing that finding alternative housing is a matter for the social services, not for a landlord whose case is frozen. The CGPJ itself publishes counts, not an analysis of causes.