Hanegadas, fanegas and square metres: how land is measured in Spain
In Spain, 1.5 fanegas and 12 hanegadas are roughly one hectare: the chaos of measuring rural land and why the Cadastre has the final say.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Hanegadas, fanegas and square metres: how land is measured
In the Spanish countryside, 1.5 fanegas and 12 hanegadas amount to pretty much the same thing: practically one hectare. But land buyers do not always know this, and that is where the tangle of traditional land measurements begins. The square metre works fine for an urban flat; as soon as the conversation turns to land, every region pulls out its own unit and transparency evaporates.
From square roots to the Cadastre
There is a trick to working out a plot's size at home. A 400-square-metre plot equals a square with 20-metre sides, and a 1,500-square-metre one is close to a square of around 39 metres, although the exact square root carries decimals few people bother to calculate. For rectangular plots, simply multiply length by width, but not every piece of land is a perfect rectangle, and that is where the problems start.
When the formulas fail, the sensible advice is just one thing: go to the Cadastre's Electronic Office (Spain's official property registry) and check the recorded surface area. That is the official figure, the one that counts for the deed, and it does not depend on someone knowing how to multiply 30 by 30 or subtract "two apples" from the result — the latter a piece of advice that circulates as a bad joke and which, of course, should not be trinc.
Units back and forth
The confusion is nothing new. Against those calling for the hanegada to be scrapped once and for all, there are those who argue that traditional measurements are still alive in the countryside and that the metric system does not solve everything: in Cantabria, the conversation even drifts towards carros (carts), with equivalences best left out of any property sale. As long as the authorities do not unify the criteria, buyers are right to distrust the listing, always ask which unit the land is quoted in, and then check with the Cadastre.
How many deals must have been closed with a wrongly calculated surface area because of this tangle of units? No data exists, but intuition says more than are ever admitted.
In the Spanish countryside, 1.5 fanegas and 12 hanegadas amount to pretty much the same thing: practically one hectare. But land buyers do not always know this, and that is where the tangle of traditional land measurements begins. The square metre works fine for an urban flat; as soon as the conversation turns to land, every region pulls out its own unit and transparency evaporates.
From square roots to the Cadastre
There is a trick to working out a plot's size at home. A 400-square-metre plot equals a square with 20-metre sides, and a 1,500-square-metre one is close to a square of around 39 metres, although the exact square root carries decimals few people bother to calculate. For rectangular plots, simply multiply length by width, but not every piece of land is a perfect rectangle, and that is where the problems start.
When the formulas fail, the sensible advice is just one thing: go to the Cadastre's Electronic Office (Spain's official property registry) and check the recorded surface area. That is the official figure, the one that counts for the deed, and it does not depend on someone knowing how to multiply 30 by 30 or subtract "two apples" from the result — the latter a piece of advice that circulates as a bad joke and which, of course, should not be trinc.
Units back and forth
The confusion is nothing new. Against those calling for the hanegada to be scrapped once and for all, there are those who argue that traditional measurements are still alive in the countryside and that the metric system does not solve everything: in Cantabria, the conversation even drifts towards carros (carts), with equivalences best left out of any property sale. As long as the authorities do not unify the criteria, buyers are right to distrust the listing, always ask which unit the land is quoted in, and then check with the Cadastre.
How many deals must have been closed with a wrongly calculated surface area because of this tangle of units? No data exists, but intuition says more than are ever admitted.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (10 replies).
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