Community swimming pool safety and liability

[Ben McNevis]

This has been taxing my brain lately:

If there's an accident in a community pool, a pool which has no cover, alarm or fence and is within a thoroughfare for access to bars and a restaurant, who will be held responsible?

The pool I'm thinking of is in Gran Can. and the reason that this has been on my mind is that I know that at some other complexes, in the past two years, they have fenced off the pools with self-closing self-locking gates. At this complex, where the president, committee and administrator are not well up on the regulations (very hot on how to line your pockets from the community funds but that's another story) the only recent safety measure has been the employment of a lifeguard (not exactly David Hassehof but I'm sure he's been trained to blow a whistle).

So I look into the regulations and for Spain it seems rather confusing. Unlike for France, there's no national law, regulations or inspection regime. I discovered that there is a European standard for design and operation of pools but the standards documents are not freely accessible so I don't know what's in them. In Spain regional governments are responsible for this kind of thing and while some regions (e.g. Madrid) seem to have laws similar to the French law, others have nothing.

It leaves me wondering if it is insurers or avoidance of liability that has lead some complexes to install safety features, and that in turn leads me to wonder who will be liable if there is an accident. Or is there some law that I'm unaware of? Does anyone have any more info?

[fincafern]

Hi Ben,
Yes, it's very confusing isn't it ? I did quite a bit of research into laws and pools lately in Spain having been terrified by an advert in the papers that said a new law had come into effect end of Oct 08. It didn't allow me enough time to install my final wall. I should have known better.
The advert was untrue and simply trying to get people to install the metal fencing he was trying to sell.
In my area, there is talk of copying the French system with modifications, to include alarms or covers and separate fencing but as far as I know this law is still at the discussion phase.
I am sorry this does not cover your questions adequately and I am referring to private rental houses as opposed to community pools.
I am going ahead and have been installing my own safety measures anyway.