You sign the lease, carry the boxes up four flights, call the supplier, and the person on the line asks for a boletín. The one in the folder is from 2004. The flat has been on the same meter since before anyone thought to keep the paper.
The boletín eléctrico is the certificate of the electrical installation, officially the Certificado de Instalación Eléctrica or CIE. An authorised electrician issues it after checking the circuits, the earthing, the protection devices and the maximum power the installation can safely carry. It is tied to the property, not to the person living there.
The technical baseline is the low-voltage regulation, Real Decreto 842/2002. A certificate that predates it, or that describes an installation nobody has touched since, tells you a lot about the flat before you even see the fuse box.
Changing the name on an active supply is usually administrative. The supplier reads the meter, checks the holder, and that is it. The certificate appears when the supply has been cut for a long time, when you ask for more power, when the installation is over 20 years old and the distributor has no record, or when a reform has changed the circuits.
This is the classic Maresme and old-Barcelona scenario. A house inherited from a parent, empty for two years, meter removed. The new tenant arrives in September, the supplier opens a contract, and the system asks for a CIE issued in the last few years. Nobody is being difficult. The distributor simply will not energise an installation it cannot see on paper.
A straightforward certificate for an installation in decent condition runs 100 to 300 euros. If the board needs work, a new differential, an earth rod or a separation of circuits, the bill passes 400 and can go higher in a large flat with electric heating. The electrician then registers the certificate with the regional industry office, and the distributor updates its records. Allow one to three weeks, longer in August.
Increasing the contracted power is a separate charge. The regulated access rights run at roughly 20 euros per extra kW plus IVA, and the enganche is billed once. Going from 4.6 to 6.9 kW is not a fortune in fees. The expensive part is discovering that the wiring cannot carry it.
The installation belongs to the property, and article 21 of the LAU puts it on the owner. A flat that cannot legally be connected is not a flat that can be rented. So the certificate to restore the basic supply is the landlord's cost, and it is worth saying so before you sign rather than after you have paid a deposit.
The tenant pays when they want more power than the flat was set up for, or when their own appliance damages the installation. Wanting 7 kW because you work from home with air conditioning in July is a tenant request. Wanting the lights to come on at all is not.
Open the board and look. Ceramic fuses instead of switches, no differential, a single row of four circuits, wires that look like two rather than three. Those are signs of a pre-1990s installation that has never been brought up to the current regulation. An aluminium cable is worse than copper and cannot simply be ignored.
Then count the load. A 4.6 kW supply is about 20 amps at 230 volts. An oven and a hob together can take 5 kW. Add an electric water heater, a washing machine and a split air conditioner and the main breaker does its job, which means the flat goes dark at dinner time. This is why so many old flats in Barcelona have a gas hob and a butano bottle in the pantry.
A current installation has a main switch, a 30 mA differential, an ICP or a control device, and separate circuits for kitchen, lighting, sockets, washing machine, air conditioning and the rest. The earth reaches every socket. The cables are copper and the cross-section matches the breaker. If you see that, the flat has been looked after by someone who expected to rent it for another twenty years.
Ask for the last CIE and the date on it. Ask for a recent electricity bill, which shows the contracted power and the CUPS. Find the meter and see whether it is inside the flat, in a cabinet on the landing, or in a central room downstairs. Ask who holds the supply contract and who pays the reconnection if it has been cut.
Then do the load arithmetic for your own life. Two people working from home, air conditioning in the bedrooms, an induction hob, an electric car charger in the garage. That is not a 4.6 kW household, and no amount of good will makes it one. Better to negotiate the upgrade into the lease than to discover it in the first heatwave.
We look at the certificate, the power and the real load of the flat, and tell you what the landlord should fix first.
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