Flood risk map, fire and soil: checking property in Spain

How to read the flood risk map for a property in Spain: PATRICOVA and the national viewer, the 2024 DANA, forest fire clearing rules, slope and soil checks.

Last checked 17 October 2026

What you will learn

Which official flood maps to open, and how to read them
The clearing duties for houses near pine woodland
A five step check for any plot or house

Three natural risks are worth checking before you buy on the Costa Blanca North: water, fire and ground. For flooding, the flood risk map that matters for a Spain property in the Comunitat Valenciana is the Generalitat's PATRICOVA, read together with the national flood viewer. For fire, Valencian law sets clearing duties for houses near woodland. For the ground, the slope and the soil decide the foundations. All three can be checked before you sign, and none of them needs to be dramatic if you know where to look.

The flood risk map: PATRICOVA and the national viewer

PATRICOVA is the Generalitat's territorial plan for the prevention of flood risk, approved by Decreto 201/2015. Its maps grade flood hazard in six levels, from 1 (highest) to 6 (lowest), plus a seventh level based on the shape of the land, as the Generalitat's open data page explains. You can display the layers for any address on the Generalitat's map viewer, the visor cartogràfic.

The national map is the SNCZI, the flood zone mapping system of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition. Its viewer shows mapped flood zones and the public domain of rivers and ravines. The two maps are drawn by different administrations with different methods, so look at both.

A map is a model, not a guarantee. A plot outside the coloured areas can still take water from a road that drains onto it, from a dry ravine (barranco) that runs for an hour after a storm, or into a garage below street level. Look at the ground as well as the screen.

What the DANA of 2024 changed

Between 28 October and 4 November 2024 a DANA, the cut-off low that brings torrential autumn rain, caused severe damage in many municipalities, above all in the province of Valencia, which the government listed in an emergency decree-law. In the Valencian law on reconstruction that followed, Ley 2/2025, planning decisions in the affected towns are made against three maps, PATRICOVA, the SNCZI and a new DANA flood map, until a revision of PATRICOVA is approved. Where a damaged building is completely rebuilt, it must meet the PATRICOVA standards for building in flood areas.

The lesson for a buyer anywhere on this coast is that official flood maps are revised after major events, and the regional plan itself is now under review. Check the version in force on the day you buy, and keep in mind that the area shown as at risk can grow.

Insurance is the other half. In Spain, damage from extraordinary floods is paid by the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros, a public body, provided you have a property insurance policy in force that covers at least one of the usual risks, such as fire, as its own guidance explains. Rain that falls directly on the house, or collects on its roof, in its drains or in its patios, is not treated as a flood. Ask your insurer what the ordinary policy covers on top.

Forest fire rules near woodland

Under the Valencian forestry law, a band of up to 500 metres around forest land is a zone of forest influence. Lighting fires there, and on forest land itself, is prohibited except where the rules expressly allow or authorise it.

The Valencian planning law, the TRLOTUP, sets out in its Annex XI what a house in or next to forest land must have. The main duty is a defence area of at least 30 metres around the building, widening to at least 50 metres where the slope is over 30%. The width can be reduced by up to half where other measures give the same protection, such as walls at least one metre high. The strip must also be maintained: its cleared band every two years and the whole strip every four.

Inside a plot within 500 metres of forest land, the same annex asks for the vegetation to be kept in check: shrubs reduced to a small share of the ground, tree cover below 40%, branches kept at least three metres from any building, no piles of firewood or garden waste, and no highly flammable hedges along the boundary.

The duty falls on the owners of the houses, jointly, or on the community of owners or the urbanisation's management body where one exists. Each town hall with forest land must map the urbanisations and houses at risk and approve that map in a full council meeting. Owners then have six months from that approval to comply, and until it is approved the earlier rules apply. If owners do not carry out the work, the town hall can require it, and it can charge for doing the work itself. Ask the town hall whether its map is approved and whether the house falls inside it.

One more rule matters for plot buyers. Forest land that has burned cannot be reclassified as urban or development land for 30 years after the fire was put out.

Slope and soil

Much of this coast is hillside. For a new building, the building code's foundations document, CTE DB SE-C, places the geotechnical study at the start of the design. It records the ground, groundwater, any instability or landslides, and the foundations of the neighbouring houses. For an existing house, an independent surveyor looks at cracks, retaining walls and drainage, which tell you how the ground has behaved so far. Our guide to buying a building plot covers the plot side.

How to check a plot or a house

Open the maps. Find the plot on the Generalitat's viewer and on the SNCZI viewer, and note the PATRICOVA level and any national flood zone.

Walk the ground. Look for a barranco, a road or slope that drains onto the plot, retaining walls, and rooms or garages below street level.

Ask the town hall. Whether the plot is in a flood zone or in the forest influence zone, whether the fire risk map is approved, and which flood documents a licence would need, which varies plot by plot.

Ask the insurer. What the policy covers and excludes for flood, storm and fire, and what is left to the Consorcio.

Ask the architect. A geotechnical study for a new building, or a survey of an existing house.

These checks belong with the rest of the due diligence before a purchase. The practical takeaway: no plot or house on this coast should be bought without the flood maps, the fire rules and the ground having been looked at. Confirm the position of your own plot with an architect or the town hall, since only they can say what it means for building. These are the building plots on the market now, and we look at each one with you before you decide.

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Written by Nicolas Strebel.