Hiring in Spain

What kind of contract does a Spanish hire get?

An indefinite one, unless there is a documented reason for something else.

The 2021 labour reform removed the two contract types that had carried most Spanish temporary hiring, the project contract and the interim contract and left temporary contracting available only in two circumstances: genuine circumstances of production and substitution for an absent employee whose post is being held open. Outside those, a contract is presumed indefinite. The presumption is not a formality that can be papered over, because a temporary contract without a permitted and documented cause converts.

Spain reinforces the point through cost as well as law. A fixed-term contract pays 6.70% for unemployment insurance against 5.50% on an indefinite one and very short contracts attract an additional fixed charge on termination. Temporary hiring in Spain is now the awkward option rather than the flexible one, which is a reversal of how the market worked for two decades and still surprises companies whose Spanish assumptions were formed earlier.

Probation is the clause that most often gets lost, because it has to exist at signature.

Those are defaults, not ceilings. Article 14 makes probation subject to whatever limits the applicable collective agreement sets: the statutory figures apply only where the agreement is silent; where the agreement sets its own, those govern. What does not vary is the writing requirement: probation exists only if it is agreed in writing in the contract, so a contract signed without the clause is a contract without probation.

What does the collective agreement actually decide?

More of the employment relationship than the statute does, and it applies without being adopted.

Spanish sectoral agreements bind every employer and worker within their scope, determined by the employer's economic activity and the territory it operates in. That means the agreement is identified before hiring rather than negotiated during it and it then overrides the statutory floor on most of the terms that matter operationally.

In practice the agreement usually fixes the salary table by professional group, which is what the payslip is measured against rather than the statutory minimum wage; the annual working hours, commonly below the statutory maximum; overtime treatment and rates; the timing and calculation of the two extraordinary payments and whether they may be prorated across twelve months; often supplements for seniority, shifts, travel or on-call; and frequently a longer holiday than the statutory minimum. It may also set a shorter probation and different notice for resignation.

The classification decision, which professional group a role belongs to under the agreement, is therefore a substantive one. It sets the pay floor and it is the thing an inspection will test first.

How much time off does a Spanish employee get?

Thirty calendar days of holiday as a floor and fourteen public holidays as the statutory ceiling.

Thirty calendar days is roughly twenty-two working days, because the count includes weekends inside the holiday period. Holiday cannot be replaced by a payment while the employment continues, which rules out the buy-back arrangements some employers use elsewhere.

The fourteen public holidays are worth planning around rather than assuming. Two of them are local: the town council proposes them and the competent regional labour authority fixes them, so two employees of the same company in different Spanish cities have different calendars and a company scheduling delivery across several sites cannot use a single national list.

What does Spanish payroll actually involve month to month?

A short cycle with two things in it that companies new to Spain tend to discover late.

The regional element of income tax is the item that most often surprises. IRPF combines a state scale with an autonomous-community scale, so the same gross salary leaves an employee with a different final tax bill depending on where they are tax resident. Withholding itself is calculated on a single national scale, so payroll does not vary between common-regime regions, with the Ceuta and Melilla reductions the one exception; the Basque provinces and Navarra operate their own foral withholding tables. A net-pay guarantee is the one place it still matters: payroll will withhold the same amount wherever the employee lives, but the annual return settles against their community's scale, so the true cost of a net offer depends on where they are resident.

The time record is the other. It applies to every employee, not only to those on hourly pay, and it must capture the specific start and finish of each working day.

What are the working-time and remote-work obligations?

Forty hours as the statutory ceiling, a daily record for everyone and a separate written agreement once remote work becomes regular.

The 30% threshold catches more arrangements than employers expect. A standard three-days-in, two-days-out pattern is 40% remote and therefore inside the rule, which makes the written remote-working agreement a routine document for most office roles hired in Spain rather than an exception for fully remote ones.

How does an employment end in Spain?

By one of three routes, with very different costs attached.

Resignation requires the notice the collective agreement specifies, commonly fifteen days. Dismissal on objective grounds, covering genuine economic, technical, organisational or production reasons, requires fifteen days of written notice and pays twenty days of salary per year of service, capped at twelve monthly payments. Disciplinary dismissal takes effect on notification with no notice and no severance, but it has to survive challenge: if a tribunal finds the dismissal unfair, the employer chooses between reinstatement and paying thirty-three days per year of service, capped at twenty-four monthly payments.

Two practical points follow. The first is that the written communication has to state the cause and a defective letter is one of the more common reasons a dismissal is found unfair on facts that would otherwise have supported it. The second is that the capped figure is under pressure from outside the courts rather than inside them. The European Committee of Social Rights has held that Spain's tariff breaches the European Social Charter because it does not always repair the damage or deter the employer, but the Supreme Court has ruled twice in full chamber, in December 2024 and July 2025, that Spanish courts cannot award more than the article 56.1 tariff. Any change has to come from the legislature.

How do you bring a specialist into Spain from outside the EU?

Through the highly qualified route, which is one of the faster processes in Europe.

Nationals of the EU, the EEA and Switzerland need no authorisation. For everyone else the main route for a professional hire is the highly qualified professional authorisation, filed electronically with the Large Companies and Strategic Groups Unit. That unit must resolve within twenty days and if it does not the authorisation is deemed granted by positive silence. The initial permit runs for up to three years, or the contract term plus three months where that is shorter.

Eligibility is proved either by a higher education qualification or by at least three years of professional experience treated as equivalent, which makes the route usable for experienced engineers and technicians without a formal degree. The route sits under Ley 14/2013, as amended to transpose Directive (EU) 2021/1883. The separate general immigration regulation, Royal Decree 1155/2024, replaced the 2011 framework on 20 May 2025 and governs the standard work-permit routes rather than this one.

Aspirock runs that process for companies deploying into Spain, from contract drafting against the right collective agreement through to the exit. For what all of it costs, see what a Spanish hire costs. For the decision about whether to incorporate at all, see EOR or a Spanish entity.