How to Hire an Employee in Spain: A Step-by-Step Guide

Before the paperwork, decide who the employer will be. If you set up your own Spanish entity, you complete every step below yourself. If you use an Employer of Record, the EOR is already a registered Spanish employer and does them for you, so you skip straight to managing the work.

The trade-off is cost, time, and administration, which we cover in detail in our comparison of an EOR versus your own Spanish entity. For a single hire or a small team, most companies use an EOR precisely so they do not have to complete the registrations that follow.

To employ anyone in Spain you must be a registered employer. That means holding a Spanish tax identification number, being registered with the Agencia Tributaria as a withholder of IRPF, and opening a social security contribution account (a Código de Cuenta de Cotización, or CCC) with the Tesorería General de la Seguridad Social.

This is the part that does not exist if you use an EOR, because the EOR already holds all of it. If you are setting up your own entity, these registrations follow incorporation and need to be in place before your first employee starts.

The employee must be affiliated and registered with social security (the alta) before their first working day. This is a hard rule in Spain, and doing it late is a common and expensive mistake. To register them you need their identification and tax number, a DNI for Spanish nationals or an NIE for foreign nationals, and their social security number (NUSS).

• DNI or NIE for the employee.
• Social security number (NUSS), obtained first if they do not have one.
• The alta filed with social security before day one.
• Bank details so you can pay salary in euro.

Give the employee a written contract that complies with the Estatuto de los Trabajadores and, crucially, with the collective agreement (convenio colectivo) that applies to their sector and region. The convenio can set minimum pay, working hours, overtime, and other terms above the statutory floor, and it is binding. Identifying the right one is a step companies often miss.

The contract then has to be registered with the SEPE, the public employment service, through its online system. Most permanent contracts in Spain are indefinite (indefinido); fixed-term contracts are only valid for specific, justified reasons since the 2022 labour reform.

Spanish law sets a floor you cannot go below. Pay must be at least the minimum wage (SMI), which in 2026 is 1,221 euros a month across 14 payments, or 17,094 euros gross a year, unless the convenio sets a higher figure. Employees are entitled to at least 30 calendar days of paid annual leave, and the standard full-time week is 40 hours averaged over the year.

Pay is usually split across 14 payments, twelve monthly plus two extra payments (pagas extraordinarias), though it can be prorated into 12 if the contract says so. Get these terms into the contract correctly and the rest of payroll follows cleanly.

With the employee registered and the contract in place, you run payroll each month. From the employee’s gross pay you withhold IRPF and pay it to the Agencia Tributaria, and you deduct their social security share. On top of gross pay, you pay the employer social security contribution of roughly 30%. Each employee gets an itemised payslip (nómina).

After that it is a monthly rhythm: payroll, filings, leave tracking, and keeping up with changes in the law and the convenio. This is the ongoing work an EOR service in Spain takes on so you do not have to, and our guide to Spanish payroll explains the deductions in full.