The instinct after finding a forced door is to make it secure immediately. It is a good instinct and it is, in this one respect, slightly out of order.
The sequence that works
1. Safety. If anyone might still be inside, 112, and wait outside. Nothing on this page comes before that.
2. Photographs, before anything is touched. The door edge, the frame, the cylinder, the marks, the room if it has been disturbed. Once a locksmith has repaired the door, the evidence of what happened to it is gone — replaced by a tidy new cylinder and a straight frame. Insurers ask for photographs of damage, and “it has been fixed” is not an answer they enjoy.
3. The denuncia. Report it to the Policía Nacional or the Guardia Civil. Most Spanish home policies will not pay out on a break-in without that report reference, and getting it started early is much easier than reconstructing it a week later. You can usually begin online.
4. Then the lock. Now make the property secure.
The temptation is to run 4 before 2 and 3, because the open door is the thing in front of you. It is also the step that costs people claims.
What your insurer will actually want from the locksmith
Not a total. An itemised factura: what was found, what was damaged, what was fitted, and what each part was. A Spanish insurer reading “cerrajería — 000 €” with no description has nothing to assess and will come back asking, which turns a two-week claim into a two-month one.
So when you book the repair, say it is an insurance job. It changes nothing about the work and everything about how the invoice is written.
If the property was empty when it happened
Common along this coast, where a great deal of the housing is second homes standing shut for months and the damage gets found by a neighbour or a cleaner rather than an owner. Two things help:
- The person who finds it takes the photographs, immediately, before ringing anyone.
- The owner can authorise the work and receive the factura by email without flying over. That is routine, and it means the property is not standing open while flights are arranged.
The bit nobody mentions
A failed attempt is still worth reporting and still worth having looked at. The door closes, so it feels like nothing happened, and a cylinder that has been twisted or a frame that has been levered is now materially weaker than it was. It is also information: somebody stood at your door, assessed it, and had a go.
If this is where you have got to, the page you want next is making a forced door secure.