The neighboring mountains in common hands

A communal woodland held in common is a form of collective private ownership owned by all the neighbours who have a dwelling and habitual residence in the parish, place or settlement in which the woodland is located.

According to Law 13/1989 of 10 October on communal woodlands, communal woodlands are “those which, regardless of their origin, their productive possibilities, of their current use or their agricultural vocation, belong to neighbourhood groups in their capacity as social groups, and not as administrative entities, and have been customarily exploited under a communal regime without the allocation of shares by the members of those groups in their capacity as neighbours.”.

The communal village mountains have been traditionally exploited by the local villagers as a whole since time immemorial under a Germanic communal system, which means that there was no specific allocation of shares among the village community members.

These mountains were fundamental to the villagers' subsistence in the past and, today, they possess four innate characteristics:

1. They are inalienable, which means that their alienation is prohibited.[1], whether total or partial. If this occurs, it is null and void, even if the alienated property has been registered in the Land Registry in the name of a third party;
2. They are inalienable, so it is not possible to acquire ownership of a community woodland by possessing it as an owner, even if this were to be done continuously over time;
3. They are indivisible, which entails the prohibition of any division of their ownership, and any such division shall be null and void ab initio.[2];
4. They are exempt from seizure, so under no circumstances can they ever be seized.

Although community woodlands are of particular importance in Galicia, they also exist in other autonomous communities such as Asturias and Castile and León (especially in the provinces bordering Galicia).