Business law
Published on October 2nd, 2026
Any company in Spain that hires someone for more than four weeks must give them written information about the essential terms of the contract and the main conditions under which the work is performed, and it is worth stressing that this is a legal obligation rather than a recommended good practice.
It is imposed by article 8.5 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores, the Spanish Workers' Statute, developed by Royal Decree 723/2026 of September 9th, which takes effect on October 5th, 2026.
Status as of October 2nd, 2026. Royal Decree 723/2026 is not yet in force. It takes effect on October 5th, 2026. Until then the previous regulation (Royal Decree 1659/1998) still applies and gives employers two months from the start of the relationship to hand over the information. This guide describes the regime that applies from that date.
This guide explains what must be handed over, when, how delivery is proved and what happens if it is not.
All employers, with no threshold of size or sector, for employment relationships lasting more than four weeks. Below that threshold the general chapter does not apply.
There are two exceptions to the threshold: contracts of fishers and of seafarers serving on vessels flagged or registered in Spain are covered regardless of duration, with their own rules on the minimum content of the contract (chapters III and IV of the Royal Decree).
Special employment relationships (Spanish law treats certain relationships, such as professional athletes or domestic workers, as special regimes with their own rules) follow those rules, and are additionally covered where those rules refer to the Workers' Statute or provide for it to apply in a supplementary way. Public employees are covered with the particularities of their own legislation.
This is the part that changes most, and the one that will generate most breaches.
The general information must be provided before the employment relationship begins. There is no later window. The previous regulation, from 1998, allowed two months from the start; that period disappears with the new Royal Decree.
If the person is to work abroad, the additional information (country, duration, currency of payment, allowances, repatriation and, for postings within the European Union, the pay due under the host State's law and the link to its official portal) must be handed over before departure. It is not required where each period of work outside Spain does not exceed four consecutive weeks.
Any later change to what was notified must be communicated as soon as possible and, at the latest, on the day the change takes effect.
The minimum content runs to seventeen items. Grouped so they make sense:
Who, where and what. Identity of the parties; start date and, for a fixed-term contract, the end date or expected duration; registered office and workplace, including the center the employee is attached to when working remotely; the content of the work; and the professional category or group with a description precise enough to know what the job actually involves.
For fixed-term contracts, in addition: precise identification of the enabling cause, the specific circumstances justifying it and its connection with the expected duration. This is the same standard article 15.1 of the Workers' Statute requires in the contract, so both documents must say the same thing.
Pay. Base salary and each supplement separately, with frequency and method of payment, and how variable components are calculated together with the criteria that trigger them.
Time. Length and distribution of daily, weekly and annual working hours, identifying night work or shift work; the circumstances and procedures for changing them; overtime arrangements and pay; vacation and the procedure for setting it. Where working time is distributed irregularly across the year, also: the system for fixing it with the reference hours and days, the minimum notice for starting and for canceling an assignment, and, for permanent seasonal contracts, the periods of activity and inactivity or an estimate of them.
Probationary period, where agreed: its specific length and each party's obligations to carry out the trial that is its object.
Training: the right to training provided by the employer.
Temporary work agencies: identity of the user undertaking and the cause of each assignment contract.
Algorithmic or automated decision-making systems: their existence and, where used to set or alter working conditions (working time, task allocation, pay, career progression, place of work or termination), also their parameters, criteria and operating rules. Two points. The duty is individual: it exists even without employee representation, unlike the duty to inform the works council under article 64.4.d) of the Workers' Statute. And the provision does not speak of artificial intelligence but of "algorithmic or automated" systems, so it reaches tools nobody would call AI.
Equality and workplace conduct: the existence and identification of the equality plan, the work-life balance policy where it improves on the statutory minimum, the protocol against sexual harassment and harassment on grounds of sex, and the planned set of measures for the real equality of LGTBI people, where these exist.
Exit: the termination procedure, formal requirements and notice periods on both sides, or the means of determining them.
Collective agreement: identification of each applicable agreement, with its code and date of official publication, its period of validity and, where relevant, whether it is in ultra-activity (continuing to apply after formal expiry).
Social security: the managing or collaborating body the company has chosen for each contingency, direct collaboration where it exists, voluntary improvements, and pension plans and funds set up for employees.
And the circumstances in which the content of the work, professional classification, pay and working time may be modified, together with the applicable procedures.
This is where the workload is saved. Part of the information may be given by precise reference to the statute, regulation or collective agreement that governs it: base salary, working time and its modification, overtime, vacation, probationary period, training, the termination procedure and the social security block. And where what changes is the referenced rule or agreement itself, there is no need to notify again.
Cross-reference is not available for, among others, the content of the work, professional classification, the cause of a fixed-term contract, algorithmic systems, the equality block, identification of the collective agreement, or the circumstances allowing modification. A well-designed document concentrates effort there and cross-refers for the rest.
On paper or electronically, provided it is accessible to the person, can be stored and printed, and the employer keeps proof of transmission or receipt. That last point is what decides litigation: an email without acknowledgment, or a document uploaded to a portal with no read record, does not prove delivery.
Where the information already appears in the written contract held by the employee, the obligation is met. Where the contract covers it only in part, the rest must be provided in writing.
Where the employee has a disability or borderline intellectual functioning, the employer must ensure that all the information is accessible and comprehensible.
Delivering this information replaces nothing: neither the written form of the contract where that is required, nor the basic copy provided to employee representatives, nor the procedures for substantial modification under article 41 of the Workers' Statute. Notifying a change is not the same as processing it.
Spain's State Public Employment Service (SEPE) has already published the information-document template that the first additional provision of the Royal Decree asked it to prepare. It is a fillable PDF on the SEPE page on contract types, in Spanish and in the other co-official languages. Using it is voluntary and carries no presumption of compliance for whoever does (the provision itself says that publishing the template conditions nothing about what is owed). Even so, it puts the content in order and marks with an asterisk the same sections that article 3.3 lets an employer handle by cross-reference.
It has to be completed wherever it asks for less than the rule. That means training (the right exists even when no training is mandatory), algorithmic systems (parameters, criteria and operating rules), the collective agreement (code, publication date and period of validity) and Social Security (the body, voluntary improvements and pension plans). A receipt line has to be added too, because the template ends only with the signature of the company's representative. My note on the SEPE template goes through it section by section.
The direct penalty is modest: a minor offense under article 6.4 of the LISOS, Spain's statute on offenses and penalties in the social order, with a fine of 70 to 750 euros. The number of employees affected grades the fine within that band, but does not multiply it.
The relevant cost is indirect. Without a record of delivery, the employer cannot prove what was agreed in a dispute over terms. And if the cause of a fixed-term contract is poorly documented, now in two places that must match, that opens the road to a declaration of permanent status, where the offense is serious and is counted per employee affected.
There is one situation with a larger and little-known financial consequence: farms receiving Common Agricultural Policy aid. Annex III of Royal Decree 1049/2022 brings Directive (EU) 2019/1152 into the rules on social conditionality, so non-compliance can translate into a reduction of the aid.
Domestic employment, the special employment relationship of professional athletes, pre-doctoral research staff and workers posted in the framework of a transnational provision of services all have their own rules referring to this regime, drafted when the 1998 regulation was in force. The repeal of that regulation was not accompanied by a clause redirecting those references, so each has to be resolved by interpretation. If your situation is one of these, do not apply the general rule without checking.
I treat this as a process, not as a document. The template is designed once, cross-referring to statute and collective agreement where the rule allows, so that a pay rise or a change of agreement does not force anything to be reissued. Then you decide who hands it over, at what point in the process and with what record. And then there is what already exists, which tends to be the uncomfortable part: the cause stated in live fixed-term contracts, and the automated systems that have been making decisions for some time without anyone putting it in writing.
You can see how I work on these matters in the business area. What exactly changes on October 5th, 2026, and what does not change despite the announcements, I set out in the note on Royal Decree 723/2026.
Editorial responsibility: Carles Jiménez, attorney-at-law (Barcelona Bar No. 34.946). This note was prepared with the assistance of artificial-intelligence tools and reviewed and approved by the author before publication.
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