6 Oct 2026
Andorra’s Property Registry: When the Church Gets a Door of Its Own
Andorra is preparing to create something every modern state needs: a Property Registry capable of establishing, with legal certainty, who owns what. That should be the simple part. The harder question is why a system supposedly designed around equal rules is being born with a special route reserved for one institution: the Catholic Church.
At the centre of the controversy is Article 90 and what the bill calls “immatriculation by ecclesiastical certification.” The defence of the provision sounds reassuring: the Church must still provide a written title of ownership, therefore no real privilege exists. But that argument creates an obvious contradiction. If the title is already valid and sufficient, why does the Church require a separate legal procedure? If the special route changes nothing, it is unnecessary. If it changes something, citizens have the right to know exactly what advantage it provides and why.
This is not a debate about faith. It is about constitutional hygiene.
Andorra’s Constitution guarantees equality before the law while recognising a special historical relationship with the Catholic Church. But history is not a blank cheque. Ceremonial recognition does not automatically justify procedural advantages in property law, particularly in a country where the Bishop of Urgell is not merely a religious authority: he is also one of the two Heads of State.
That dual role matters.
The Church in Andorra is not simply the guardian of Romanesque chapels and parish houses. Ecclesiastical structures have managed assets worth extraordinary sums. The inheritance of Maria Dolors Maestre, publicly valued in the hundreds of millions of euros, and the subsequent sale of important real-estate assets such as Borda Nova demonstrate that religious institutions can operate in exactly the same property market as developers, investors, banks and major fortunes.
There is nothing illegal about that. But when an institution behaves as an economic actor, the argument for exceptional treatment becomes weaker, not stronger.
Spain should serve as a warning. For years, the Catholic Church enjoyed extraordinary powers to register property through ecclesiastical certification. Tens of thousands of assets were eventually registered, including not only churches but land, homes, commercial premises and other properties. The controversy reached the European Court of Human Rights and Spain ultimately abolished the privilege in 2015.
The Andorran mechanism is not identical, and pretending otherwise would be intellectually dishonest. But the lesson remains: whenever the beneficiary of a property claim is also allowed to issue documentation carrying special registral significance, democracy should demand additional safeguards.
The broader Andorran context makes the issue still more sensitive.
The history of Crèdit Andorrà includes figures linked to Opus Dei. “La Caixa” once controlled 46.35% of the bank. Josep-Delfí Guàrdia, appointed to the Constitutional Court by Episcopal Co-Prince Joan-Enric Vives, simultaneously occupied senior positions within CriteriaCaixa.
None of these facts proves corruption. But they demonstrate how religious, financial and institutional elites can overlap inside an extraordinarily small state.
The same caution applies to the judiciary. Several senior magistrates serving in Andorra built important parts of their careers in Girona. This is legal and can partly be explained by formal judicial cooperation between Spain and Andorra. But Girona was also the setting for the Info-Cobro scandal and the collapse of Jordi Cuxart’s auction business.
Fernando Lacaba, then president of the Girona Provincial Court, later attempted to become a magistrate in Andorra. Carles Cruz Moratones, who would also serve in the Andorran judiciary, had participated in a chamber dealing with a case connected to the Info-Cobro bankruptcy.
Again: coincidence is not guilt.
