Pla Renova: how an Andorran owners' community applies for the grants

An eight-flat community votes to replace the external joinery and refurbish the façade. Budget: one hundred and twenty thousand euros. The president has read that public grants exist, and everyone approves with that in mind. The surprise arrives at the bank: the grant does not reach the community's account until the work is complete and the invoices are paid.

That is the point which wrecks the most funding plans, and it needs to be understood before anything is voted. The grant programme created by Law 16/2022, and set out in the regulations approved by Decree 100/2025, is indeed a non-repayable grant, but paid afterwards: a percentage of the spend, fixed by each annual call according to the type of work, and released once payment of the invoices has been verified. For as long as the work is running, the money comes out of the community's own account, and the funding plan has to be built around that fact from day one.

What it covers and who can apply

Pla Renova supports the renovation of Andorra's existing building stock, improvements to the energy performance of buildings and the use of renewable energy. In other words, precisely the kind of work an owners' community postpones year after year because nobody wants to be the one proposing the levy.

Individual owners and owners' communities can both apply, and there are specific enhancements for properties destined for the rental market. Each call sets out the eligible works and the maximum amounts by category, so the first useful document to read is not the law but the current call.

Sequence matters: the application goes in before the work starts. A community that commissions the job in September and discovers the programme in January has lost that entire year's grant.

The detail that changes the funding plan

Because the grant arrives at the end, the community has to put up all the money first. This is where the programme offers its most useful and least known feature: preferential loans guaranteed by the Government, capable of covering up to 100 % of the project budget.

That guarantee is what makes a refurbishment viable when the alternative is an immediate levy on every owner at once. For credit above 15,000 euros the obligation to grant a mortgage guarantee in favour of the Government still applies, and that is something the meeting must understand and approve with the full picture in front of it.

Practical note: ask the bank for two scenarios, with and without the grant. If the project only works on the assumption that the subsidy arrives, the community is taking a risk that belongs in the minutes.

What the meeting has to approve first

The application itself is administrative, but behind it sit decisions only the owners' meeting can take. It is worth putting them all on one agenda and recording them in detail:

• Approval of the works and of the specific quotation, naming the contractor
• The funding route: reserve fund, levy, guaranteed loan or a combination
• Express authority for the president or administrator to sign the application and the loan
• The expected timetable and a commitment to retain every invoice

That last point looks minor and is not. The grant is settled against paid invoices: a well-executed job with disorganised paperwork ends up receiving less than it was entitled to, or receiving it late.

The paperwork a community has to produce

Where the applicant is an owners' community, the deed of horizontal division must be submitted together with a certificate from the community's administrator confirming the identity of every owner of the flats and premises within it.

For a well-run community that is an afternoon's work. For one that has never updated its owner list after the last few sales, it is weeks. No other single cause stalls more applications halfway.

Use the opportunity to bring the rest up to date: the minute book, the register of owners and the notification records, which in Andorra remain the weak point of many meetings.

When to start preparing

The call is annual and opens early in the year: the 2026 edition was published on 18 March. Which means the community's real work happens in autumn and winter (collecting quotes, comparing them, convening the meeting and approving the funding) so the file is ready the day the window opens. A community that starts moving in the month the call is published is already late, because obtaining three serious quotations and holding a properly convened meeting easily takes six weeks, and none of those weeks can be compressed however urgent things get.

Start with the meeting. The rest follows.

Pla Renova is not complicated, but it is strict about order: the meeting's decision first, then the application, then the works, and the payment last. Gather the quotes before Christmas, take the complete funding package to the meeting and record everything in the minutes, signing authority included.

Information up to date at the time of writing. This article is for information only and does not constitute legal advice.