The Ley Reguladora de la Actividad Urbaniste, or LRAU, is a law enacted in Spain in 1994. Its purpose was to facilitate development and improvement of rural lands that had been neglected or were in need of repairs. The law allowed local governments to reclassify previously rural land as an urbanization area, opening it up for development.

Put simply, many people have over the years taken advantage of cheap land prices in rural areas to buy up land and develop it buy building a property. When the property has been constructed the price of the land increases greatly in value. In some cases in order to ensure that the whole community benifits land has been 'grabbed' back so that a proper infrastructure can be put in place.

This system has led to some abuse and working in concert with local authorities, developers could force land owners to sell all or part of their property at prices well below market value, and even make the property owners pay large sums of money for infrastructure construction as well.