Short answer. Generally yes — the lease ends with the usufruct. Under Article 572 of the Civil Code, contracts a usufructuary enters into terminate when the usufruct expires. The exception is a lease of rural land, which continues for the rest of the current agricultural year.
What the law says
all the contracts he may enter into as such usufructuary shall terminate upon the expiration of the usufruct, saving leases of rural lands, which shall be considered as subsisting during the agricultural year
Civil Code, Article 572 — The Usufructuary May Lease or Transfer. Read the full provision →
What a usufructuary can do with the property
Article 572 of the Civil Code gives the usufructuary broad options in how to use the usufruct property. The usufructuary may personally enjoy it, lease it to another, or even transfer the usufruct to a third party — including as a gift. This flexibility makes usufruct a useful tool for income generation. But this freedom comes with a structural limit: the usufructuary's authority ends when the usufruct ends, and so do the contracts that flowed from it.
The general rule: contracts end with the usufruct
Article 572 is explicit: all the contracts the usufructuary enters into as usufructuary shall terminate upon the expiration of the usufruct. When the usufruct runs out — whether by the death of the usufructuary, the expiration of a fixed term, or the happening of a resolutory condition — any lease the usufructuary signed over the property is cut short at the same moment. The tenant cannot insist on the full remaining term of their lease against the owner. The authority that created the lease ceased to exist.
The rural land exception
Article 572 carves out one exception: leases of rural lands, which are considered to subsist during the agricultural year. If the usufruct expires in the middle of a planting season or an ongoing harvest cycle, the agricultural tenant does not have to abandon their crop. The lease is treated as continuing until the end of the agricultural year in progress. This protects farmers from being left with an unharvested crop due to a legal event — the expiration of the usufruct — that had nothing to do with their relationship with the land.
Practical implications for tenants and usufructuaries
If you are a tenant who leased from a usufructuary, your lease is only as durable as the usufruct. Before or when you sign the lease, it is worth asking whether the lessor holds the property as a usufruct and when that usufruct expires. A lease that appears to run for five years may effectively be cut to two if the usufruct ends in year two. As an owner whose property is subject to a usufruct, you will be entitled to full possession when the usufruct ends — but if there is a running agricultural lease, you may need to wait until the end of that year's cycle before the rural tenant must leave.