Short answer. No, not without proper authority. Article 1647 provides that a husband cannot constitute a lease of his wife's paraphernal real estate to be recorded in the Registry of Property without proper authority. The same limit binds a father or guardian over a ward's property, and a manager without special power.
What the law says
If a lease is to be recorded in the Registry of Property
Civil Code, Article 1647 — Authority Needed to Record Certain Leases. Read the full provision →
What the law says
cannot constitute the same without proper authority: the husband with respect to the wife's paraphernal real estate
Civil Code, Article 1647 — Authority Needed to Record Certain Leases. Read the full provision →
What the law says
the father or guardian as to the property of the minor or ward, and the manager without special power
Civil Code, Article 1647 — Authority Needed to Record Certain Leases. Read the full provision →
Paraphernal property and the registrable-lease setting
Paraphernal property is the wife's own exclusive property — what belongs to her separately, as distinct from the property held in common by the spouses. Article 1647 concerns leases of such property that are to be entered in the public land records: it applies If a lease is to be recorded in the Registry of Property. Recording a lease is significant because it gives the lease effect against third persons and can bind the land for a long term. The article singles out registrable leases granted by certain people over property that is not fully their own to deal with, and restricts their power to constitute those leases on their own.
Proper authority is required
The restriction is that such a person cannot do it alone. The article says the listed persons cannot constitute the same without proper authority: the husband with respect to the wife's paraphernal real estate. So a husband may not, of his own accord, grant a registrable lease of land that is his wife's exclusive property; he needs proper authority to do so. The property is hers, and the fact of marriage does not hand him the power to encumber her separate real estate with a recorded lease. Without her authority, he lacks the capacity the article requires for that act, and the lease he purports to constitute is wanting in it.
A limit on recording that reaches others too
The article is a limit on constituting a lease for recording, and it catches more than husbands. It lists, alongside the husband over paraphernal property, the father or guardian as to the property of the minor or ward, and the manager without special power. The common thread is a person dealing with property that belongs to someone else — a spouse, a ward, a principal — whose interest the law protects by insisting on proper authority before a registrable lease can bind that property. A manager, for instance, needs a special power; general management does not by itself carry the authority to grant such a lease. In each case the safeguard is the same: authority from the person whose property it is.
What this means in practice
For a wife, this means her separate real estate is not exposed to a recorded lease by her husband acting alone; her authority is needed, and a lease he purports to constitute without it lacks the proper authority the article demands. For anyone taking such a lease, the practical caution is to check that the person granting it actually holds authority over the property — the wife's authorisation for paraphernal land, the requisite authority for a ward's property, a special power for a manager. A registrable lease granted without that authority is not something to rely on, so it should be confirmed before the lease is taken or recorded.