Employment Law in Spain

Employment law in Spain sets contract types, working hours, minimum wage and dismissal rules employers must follow. The Estatuto de los Trabajadores (Real Decreto Legislativo 2/2015), as amended by the 2021-22 labor reform, governs contract types, probation, working hours, pay, leave, dismissal and severance.

What Does Employment Law in Spain Cover for Employers?

Employment law in Spain covers which contract type you use, the length of a probationary period, the standard working week, the minimum wage, holiday entitlement, and the rules and cost of ending someone’s employment.

The framework below covers the employer’s side of the relationship and applies whether the reader is about to make a first hire or already runs a payroll. A reader who has not yet formed a Spanish company needs company formation first. A reader who already employs staff and needs payroll, Social Security registration or monthly filings needs payroll help.

What Types of Employment Contracts Exist in Spain?

Spain runs four main types of employment contract, and picking the wrong one is one of the most common mistakes an employer makes (covered further down this page).

The contrato indefinido is an open-ended, permanent contract with no fixed end date. The contrato temporal is a fixed-term contract, and since the 2021-22 labor reform it can only be used for specific, named causes under article 15 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores. One route covers occasional or unforeseeable production circumstances and fluctuations, capped at 6 months and extendable to 1 year by a sectoral convenio. A separate route covers occasional, foreseeable and short, delimited situations for no more than 90 days in a calendar year, or 120 days in the agricultural and agri-food sectors, subject to the article’s conditions. The other named cause is substitution of a worker, with the contract identifying the absent worker and the cause. A worker hired in breach of these rules becomes fixed (fijo) by operation of law.

Article 11 creates a single contrato formativo category with two modalities. It does not create two separate contract types. The contrato de formacion en alternancia combines paid work with vocational training, university study or a formal training process, runs from 3 months to 2 years, allows no probationary period, and must pay at least 60% of the applicable convenio rate in the first year and 75% in the second, never below the minimum wage. The contrato formativo para la obtencion de la practica profesional is for someone who already holds a qualifying degree or certificate, entered within 3 years of finishing their studies (5 years for a person with a disability), runs 6 months to 1 year, and allows a probationary period of up to 1 month.

The contrato a tiempo parcial is a part-time contract, defined under article 12 as fewer hours than a “comparable full-time worker” at the same company and workplace doing similar work. It must be in writing and state the exact hours and their distribution; without that, the contract is presumed full-time.

What Are the Rules on Spain’s Probationary Period (Periodo de Prueba)?

The length of Spain’s probationary period is not one national number. Article 14 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores lets a convenio colectivo set its own limit first, and only when the convenio is silent does the statutory default apply.

Probation may not exceed six months for tecnicos titulados (qualified professionals) or two months for other workers, absent a convenio provision. In a company with fewer than 25 workers, the cap drops to three months for a worker who is not a tecnico titulado. A fixed-term contract of six months or less carries its own cap of one month, unless the convenio states otherwise. A probationary clause is void outright where the worker already performed the same functions at the company before, under any contract type, so re-hiring someone into a “new” probation period does not work.

What Are Spain’s Standard Working Hours and Overtime Rules?

The Estatuto de los Trabajadores caps the ordinary working week at 40 hours of effective work on annual average, under article 34.1. At least 12 hours must separate the end of one working day and the start of the next, and daily hours cannot exceed 9 unless a convenio colectivo or a company-worker-representative agreement sets a different daily distribution while still respecting that rest period. A rest break of at least 15 minutes is required whenever a continuous shift runs past 6 hours.

Overtime (“horas extraordinarias”) is any work beyond the maximum ordinary day, under article 35. It is paid at not less than the value of an ordinary hour, or compensated with equivalent paid rest, and where there is no agreement it must be compensated within 4 months. The annual overtime cap is 80 hours, reduced pro rata for a part-time equivalent schedule; hours compensated with rest inside that 4-month window do not count against the cap.

What Is Spain’s Minimum Wage (SMI) and How Does It Apply?

For 2026, Spain’s Salario Minimo Interprofesional (SMI) is €40.70 a day or €1,221 a month, depending on whether pay is set by the day or the month, according to Real Decreto 126/2026, articles 1 and 3. That figure is a 3.1% increase over the 2025 amount.

The SMI is set nationally, so it does not vary by comunidad autonoma, and only cash pay counts toward it: pay in kind can never bring the cash amount below the floor. For any calculation that compares the SMI against an annual professional salary, the annual figure used as the comparison term may never be treated as lower than €17,094, under the same Real Decreto. A guide or contract that quotes last year’s figure is already out of date, because the SMI is fixed by a fresh Real Decreto every year.

What Do Collective Bargaining Agreements (Convenios Colectivos) Mean for an Employer?

A convenio colectivo, a sector- or company-level agreement on pay and conditions, binds every employer and worker inside its scope for its whole term, under articles 82.3 and 90 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores. An employer does not choose whether a convenio applies; the company’s own activity and location decide that, whether or not the employer negotiated it or even knows it exists yet.

Convenios must be in writing on pain of nullity, filed with the competent labor authority for registration within 15 days of the negotiating parties signing, and then published within a further 20 days in the BOE for a state-level convenio, or in the comunidad autonoma’s or the province’s own official gazette for one with a narrower territorial scope. Identifying the right convenio is usually one of the first tasks an HR advisor (or HR adviser, in British usage) handles once a company is about to make its first hire, since it can set pay scales, working hours and probation lengths above the statutory floor covered earlier on this page.

What Holiday and Leave Entitlements Do Employees Have in Spain?

Every employee in Spain is entitled to a minimum of 30 calendar days of paid annual leave, under article 38 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores. The entitlement counts in calendar days, and treating it as 30 working days overstates what an employee is actually owed. That leave can never be swapped for a cash payment, whatever the convenio or the individual contract says.

Employees also carry maternity, paternity and other family leave entitlements, and a separate public-holiday calendar applies on top of annual leave.

How Does Dismissal Work in Spain?

Dismissal in Spain works by classification into one of three categories under articles 52 to 55 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores, plus a written procedural step that has to be followed regardless of which category applies.

Despido procedente is a dismissal a court finds justified: the employer proved the cause it relied on. Despido improcedente is an unfair dismissal, either because the alleged cause was not proven or because the employer did not follow the required written form. Despido nulo is a void dismissal, typically because it is discriminatory, breaches a fundamental right, or falls inside a protected period such as pregnancy or parental leave. An objective-cause dismissal, covering ineptitude, failure to adapt to a reasonable technical change, or economic, technical, organizational or production causes, requires written communication stating the cause, together with the indemnity and notice covered in the next section. A disciplinary dismissal, based on a grave and culpable breach by the worker such as repeated unjustified absence, indiscipline or a breach of good faith, requires written notice stating the facts and the effective date. US usage calls this a “layoff” and UK usage calls it “redundancy” when the cause is economic. Both terms sit inside the objective-cause category above, separate from the disciplinary category.

What Severance Pay Do You Owe When You End Someone’s Employment in Spain?

Severance in Spain runs on a days-of-service formula that differs by dismissal category, and the two formulas are not interchangeable.

For an objective-cause dismissal, the employer pays the indemnity simultaneously with the written notice, prorating any period under a year by month. For an unfair dismissal, the employer chooses within five days of the court’s ruling between reinstating the worker or paying the higher indemnity; choosing the indemnity ends the contract as of the date employment actually stopped, and if the employer never exercises that choice, reinstatement is presumed to apply. Reinstatement also carries salarios de tramitacion, back pay from the dismissal to the ruling.

What Are the Most Common Employment-Law Mistakes Employers Make in Spain?

The recurring mistakes employers make in Spain sit in five places: contract choice, convenio identification, registration, dismissal procedure and hiring structure.

Misclassifying a worker as autonomo (self-employed) when the working relationship actually shows dependency is a common mistake. Under articles 1.1 and 8.1 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores, a labor relationship is presumed wherever someone provides a service inside another party’s sphere of organization and direction in exchange for pay, and that presumption is the legal basis courts and the Inspeccion de Trabajo y Seguridad Social use to reclassify a falso autonomo as an employee. Missing the applicable convenio colectivo entirely, covered above, is another; so is skipping the ten-day notification to the public employment service that article 8.3 requires for every contract, written or not. Mishandling a dismissal letter or process can turn a fair dismissal into an unfair one on its own: article 55.4 makes a dismissal improcedente where the required written form was not followed, regardless of whether the underlying cause was real. Autonomo vs SL covers the structural side of the self-employment question in depth.

Treating an Employer of Record arrangement as a risk-free shortcut around all of the above is the fifth mistake. Assigning workers to another company outside a duly authorized temporary work agency can amount to cesion ilegal de trabajadores, illegal worker transfer, under article 43, where the receiving company effectively directs the work but the arrangement is dressed up as a service contract. Both companies then answer jointly and severally for the workers’ and Social Security obligations. Payroll services in Spain covers the EOR legal-risk framing in full.

Which Employment-Law Question Needs a Specialist?

A generic search result cannot see the reader’s actual contract or situation, so which page comes next depends on where the business stands.

A reader forming a company and about to make a first hire needs a company formation specialist before anything on this page becomes relevant in practice. A reader who already employs staff and needs payroll, Social Security registration or Modelo 111/190 filings needs a payroll specialist instead.

A reader with a specific contract-drafting or dismissal question, the kind of case searched as “Spanish employment lawyer,” needs an employment attorney, called an employment solicitor in British English, who has actually reviewed the contract or the facts. The section below covers that route.

See Legal Support for Employment Contracts and Disputes

Advisors in Spain handles employment-contract review and disputes through its English-speaking legal team.