Apart from the compulsory implementation of some European Union (EU) directives in financial and securities markets, the most prominent legal news in commercial law during the past year in Spain has probably been the two main innovations in security legal devices, brought about by the Mortgage Market Law Reform 41/2007. Firstly, the global land mortgage was finally incorporated into the Spanish contractual set of techniques for securing financial debts. Secondly, the way has been opened for secured creditors to get perfection and validity of receivables pledges through the registration of such charges as non-possessory pledges in the Movable Assets Registry (new article 54 of the Movable Mortgage & Non-Possessory Pledge Law of 1954).
It is noteworthy that the General Directorate of the Registry has held a restrictive doctrine since the 1980s, refusing to permit the registration of land mortgages securing a bulk of present and futures debts, where such duties were not ‘bound’ to, or do not arise out of, a basic and unique commercial relationship. The Directorate further decided that this requirement was not fulfilled by the mere ‘collection’ of debts in a single current account. Although this doctrine was strongly influenced by the ‘full specification rule’ which governs the traditional practice of the employees who run the Land Registry in Spain, it had at last become a burden for territorial financing and has given rise to a continuous flow of conflicts and doubts as regards the scope of the freedom of contract in this field of law. Expressly, the General Directorate has demonised the global mortgage as a shortcut to incorporate the ‘floating mortgage’ into our law and to open the way to the inadmissible ‘owner self-mortgage’.
