English–Spanish damp and mould glossary for Barcelona flats

The three words everything else hangs on

Before a builder, a painter or an administrador de fincas discusses anything else, they want one word: condensación, filtración or capilaridad. Condensation, water getting in, or damp rising from the ground. Who pays and which product both follow from it — and none of the products below removes the water.

Not knowing yet is a legitimate answer, and saying so stops you being sold the wrong thing: “Todavía no sé si es condensación, filtración o capilaridad.”

This is general information about vocabulary, Spanish and Catalan law and insurance practice — not legal, financial or insurance advice, none of which NoMoho provides. We are not lawyers or loss adjusters.

Causes: the words that decide who is responsible

Spanish	English	What it changes
humedad por condensación	condensation damp	Room moisture landing on a cold surface. Least settled in law: courts have blamed the tenant, the building, and both.
humedad por filtración	penetrating damp, a leak	Water from outside or a neighbour. Façade, roof or riser makes the comunidad your counterparty — its duty is estanquidad, watertightness.
humedad por capilaridad	rising damp	Ground moisture rising through masonry. A building characteristic, not behaviour — and what policies most consistently exclude.
puente térmico	thermal bridge	A cold line in the structure: a beam, a corner, a window reveal. Explains a mark that runs straight.

What you can see: describing damage so the quote matches the job

Spanish	English	What it changes
moho / hongos	mould / fungi	The growth itself. Nobody can name it from colour or a photo.
mancha de humedad	damp stain, tide mark	Where water reached. A sharp horizontal edge means something different from a soft cloudy one.
salitre / eflorescencia	salts, efflorescence	White bloom left as a wall dries. Deal with it before any coating, or it returns through it.
pintura levantada / desconchado	lifted paint / flaking	The finish has lost its bond, often moisture leaving through a coating that will not let it. Yeso muerto means the plaster below has gone too.

Places: which parts of a Barcelona building argue with each other

Spanish	English	What it changes
elemento común / privativo	common / private element	Decides who your counterparty is. Façade, roof, structure and shared installations are common elements here (art. 553-41 CCCat).
pared medianera	party wall	Shared with next door — a classic route for a leak you did not cause.
patio de luces	internal light well	Narrow, shaded, barely ventilated. Rooms facing one behave nothing like street-facing rooms.
forjado / bajante	floor slab / waste stack	Structure, and a normally shared stack. Damp in either is no longer a decorating conversation.
terrado / azotea / cubierta	roof terrace / flat roof / roof	A terrace one flat uses exclusively is still a common element: upkeep is that owner’s, structural defects the community’s, unless caused by misuse (art. 553-43.4 CCCat).

The work: sanear, imprimar, pintar, obra

Spanish	English	What it changes
sanear / repicar	strip back to sound surface / hack off	Removing what failed rather than covering it. Be wary of anyone who skips it.
imprimación / fijador / selladora	primer / consolidant / sealer	Three jobs, not one. Fijador consolidates chalky plaster; selladora seals a sound porous wall.
pintura antihumedad / antimoho	”anti-damp” / fungicidal paint	Antihumedad is an umbrella label, not a formulation. Antimoho is a film preservative for the paint film’s own surface, not a room treatment.
anticondensación / transpirable	anti-condensation / breathable	One slightly raises surface temperature, at the film build its data sheet specifies. The other is an Sd value: ask for the number, not the adjective.
impermeabilizante / hidrófugo	waterproofer / water repellent	The costly confusion: a waterproofer also stops the wall drying outward; a repellent sheds rain while staying vapour-open.
obra / ficha técnica	building works / data sheet	Obra means the job has left the surface category, and left ours. Always ask for the ficha técnica.

The products you will search for by name mostly do not exist here: B&Q does not deliver to Spain, and UK trade lines are not Spanish shelf stock. What to ask for when buying anti-mould paint in Spain covers the substitutes.

People and process

Spanish	English	What it changes
comunidad de propietarios / administrador de fincas	community of owners / managing agent	Governed here by the Codi civil de Catalunya, Llibre V, not the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal — pages citing “Article 10 LPH” cite the wrong statute. The administrador runs the community, not the decision on who pays.
perito	loss adjuster, technical expert	The insurer’s perito works for the insurer. Not a judicial finding; you may appoint your own.
valoración / presupuesto	assessment / written quote	A view on cause and scope; then the priced offer.
burofax	certified postal notification	Worth sending only with both acuse de recibo and certificación de contenido.
cédula de habitabilidad	habitability certificate	Legally required to let a home in Catalonia. Does not lapse because damp appears.
orden de ejecución	municipal order to do works	The Ajuntament must order necessary works when an interested party asks, and can name the community.

Two claims you will meet in English and should not rely on. “Your landlord has twenty days to fix it” misreads the statute: the twenty days are how long the works themselves last, after which rent drops in proportion to the part of the home you cannot use. It is no deadline to begin — Spanish law sets none. And on the seguro de hogar, “insurance covers damp” and “insurance never covers damp” are equally wrong — it turns on cause, suddenness and wording. Who pays for mould in a rented flat and the comunidad and insurance guide separate settled from unsettled.

Sentences worth having ready

• “Tengo una mancha de humedad en la pared. ¿Puede venir a verla?” — can you come and look at it?
• “¿Es condensación, filtración o capilaridad? ¿Cómo lo sabe?” — the reasoning, not only the verdict.
• “¿Esto es un elemento común o privativo?” — the question that reframes a conversation with an administrador.

The written version: how to report damp to your landlord in Spain.

If your situation is more specific

The vocabulary above is the shared layer. These pages take one situation each, in English:

• black mould on a wall — what the colour does and does not tell you, without the scare stories.
• a mark on the ceiling — and why what sits directly above it decides who looks at the cause first.
• mould behind furniture — the wardrobe against a cold party wall, the commonest version of this in a Barcelona flat.
• what drives the cost — the factors, not a figure, since nobody can price a wall they have not seen.
• what to check before you sign — if you are still viewing the flat rather than living in it.

Where we fit in this list

NoMoho does the surface end: treating visible mould, saneado of damp walls and ceilings, and anti-mould paint as a finish on a prepared surface. Not obra, waterproofing, injection against capilaridad, leak repair or ventilation, and no expert reports for disputes. From photos we can usually say which side of that line your case sits on. We do not promise mould will not return.

If the mark itself is the problem, mould removal in Barcelona explains the work, and condensation mould covers the commonest cause. Or send a wide shot, a close-up and a line of context on WhatsApp, in English.