Spain Employment Contracts: What the Law Requires

At a minimum, a Spanish contract should identify the parties, the job role and category, the salary and how it is structured across 12 or 14 payments, the working hours and schedule, the place of work, the holiday entitlement, the applicable collective agreement, and the start date and any probation period. Certain contract types must be in writing by law, and in practice every contract should be.

Much of the detail is not really a matter of negotiation, because the convenio and the Estatuto already set it. The contract records the specifics of this job within that framework. For the full hiring sequence around the contract, see our step-by-step guide to hiring in Spain.

The permanent contract, the contrato indefinido, is the default and by far the most common. The 2022 labour reform deliberately made it harder to use fixed-term (temporal) contracts: they are now only valid for specific, justified reasons, such as covering a named employee’s absence or a genuine, time-limited surge in production. Using a fixed-term contract without a proper reason can convert it into a permanent one.

Alongside these are part-time contracts, training and apprenticeship contracts for younger or newly qualified workers, and the fijo-discontinuo, a permanent contract for work that recurs seasonally. Choosing the right type matters, because the wrong one creates risk rather than flexibility.

A probation period, the periodo de prueba, lets either side end the contract without notice or severance while it runs. The Estatuto sets the maximums: up to six months for qualified technicians (técnicos titulados), and two months for other employees, or three months for other employees in companies with fewer than 25 staff. A collective agreement can set its own limits within the law.

The single most important rule is that the probation period only exists if it is written into the contract. If it is not stated in writing, there is no probation, and the employee is a confirmed permanent hire from day one. This catches out employers who rely on a verbal understanding.

This is the point overseas employers most often miss. The convenio colectivo for the employee’s sector and region sets binding minimum terms, on pay, working hours, overtime, leave, and sometimes benefits, that apply over the top of the contract. The contract cannot give less than the convenio requires, and where it is silent, the convenio fills the gap.

So before drafting, you identify the correct convenio and check its minimums, including the minimum pay for the employee’s job category, which may be above the national minimum wage. Applying the right convenio is a core part of getting the contract right.

Two registrations must happen around the start date. The employee has to be registered with social security (the alta) before their first working day, and the contract has to be communicated to the SEPE, the public employment service, through its online system. Both are legal obligations, and missing the social security registration in particular is a serious and common error.

Once those are done and the first payroll is set up, the employee is properly on the books. If you would rather not manage the convenio checks, the drafting, and the registrations yourself, that is exactly what an EOR service in Spain takes on.