Business law
Published on September 15th, 2026
If you employ people in Spain, one deadline you have probably never had to think about has disappeared. Until October 5th, 2026 an employer had two months from the first day of work to hand over the written statement of employment terms. Since then, that statement has to be in the employee's hands before the first day, and it has to cover roughly twice as much ground as before.
The instrument is Royal Decree 723/2026 of September 9th, published in the official gazette on September 15th. It partially transposes Directive (EU) 2019/1152 on transparent and predictable working conditions, and it replaces Royal Decree 1659/1998 in its entirety, after twenty-eight years. As the word "partially" carries a good deal of weight, I start with what the decree leaves alone.
Directive 2019/1152 is broader than the decree: a maximum probationary period, the right to take parallel employment, minimum predictability of work, measures against on-demand contracts, the right to request a more secure form of employment and receive a reasoned reply, and mandatory training provided free of charge and counted as working time.
None of that arrives with this decree, whose preamble says so in terms and describes what it contains as a transposition confined to information rights. On probation, the employer must state its length and conditions, while the substantive cap stays where it was, in article 14 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores, the Spanish Workers' Statute. On training, the employer must say that the right exists, without any obligation to fund it or to fit it inside working hours. Any headline announcing those institutions as an October novelty has got it wrong.
Under the 1998 regulation an employer had two months from the start of the relationship to hand the information over. Article 7.1 of the new decree requires it before the employment relationship begins, which turns a back-office task into part of the hiring decision itself. Changes during the relationship follow the same logic, and where there used to be a month from the date a change took effect, the employer must now inform as soon as possible, and no later than the day the change bites (article 7.3).
The Directive (article 5.1) would have been satisfied with the core items inside the first seven calendar days and the remainder within a month, which means Spain has gone further here than Brussels asked for. The more-favorable-provisions clause is what allows a member state to tighten it. The practical consequence for an employer is that the paperwork can no longer trail behind the start date.
Article 3.2 lists seventeen items against the nine in the repealed regulation, and in my judgment only four of them will force most employers to change anything in practice.
The reason for a fixed-term contract. For temporary contracts the employer has to state the enabling cause, the specific circumstances that justify it and how those connect with the expected duration. That is, word for word, what article 15.1 of the Workers' Statute already demands in the contract. The requirement itself was already there, and what the decree adds is a second document that says the same thing and has every opportunity to say it worse. Any divergence between the two is documentary evidence handed to the other side in a permanent-status claim.
Algorithmic systems. Employers must disclose that algorithmic or automated decision-making systems exist and, where those systems set or alter working conditions (working time, task allocation, pay, career progression, place of work or termination), must also disclose their parameters, criteria and operating rules. This sits apart from article 64.4.d) of the Workers' Statute, which deals with informing the works council. The duty here is owed to each employee individually and therefore applies in companies with no employee representation at all, which describes most small businesses in Spain. Nor does the wording stop at artificial intelligence, since the rule says "algorithmic or automated" and a shift-allocation module or a performance-scoring tool answers to that description comfortably.
Equality and compliance. Employers must say whether they have an equality plan and identify it, along with the protocol against sexual harassment and harassment on grounds of sex, the work-life balance policy where it improves on the statutory minimum, and LGTBI measures where they exist. An employer who is required to have those instruments and does not will now be saying so in writing, to every single employee.
Proof of delivery. Article 6.2 requires the employer to keep evidence of transmission or receipt, which means an email with no acknowledgment, or a document parked on a portal with no read record, will not get you very far.
The single transitional provision looks generous, in that for relationships already in force on October 5th the employer only has to hand over the information to employees who ask for it, and then within thirty working days of the request.
The generosity runs out in its second paragraph, under which any change occurring after entry into force must be notified automatically, with no request needed and within the ordinary deadline. Until the first variation, "only on request" holds good, but a shift change, a move to a different workplace or a variation of terms is enough to carry that contract into the new regime.
The direct cost is small, given that the decree creates no penalty regime of its own and leaves the LISOS, Spain's statute on offenses and penalties in the social order, untouched. The matter stays in article 6.4, a minor offense carrying a fine of 70 to 750 euros under article 40.1.a). The number of employees affected grades the fine within that band (article 39.2) without multiplying it. The statute does provide expressly for multiplication elsewhere, and the omission here reads as deliberate.
Indirectly, an employer with no record of delivery cannot prove what was agreed in any dispute about terms, and a badly documented reason for a fixed-term contract, now recorded in two separate places with two chances to be inconsistent, is the short road to a declaration of permanent status, where the offense is serious and is penalized per employee affected.
Farms receiving Common Agricultural Policy aid tend to be left out of the summaries altogether. Annex III of Royal Decree 1049/2022 pulls Directive 2019/1152 into the social conditionality rules, and a breach can feed through into a reduction of the subsidy. The sums there bear no relation to a 750-euro fine.
I would start with a template statement that cross-refers to statute and collective agreement wherever the rule permits, a delivery route that records who received what and when, and a review of how the cause is drafted in the fixed-term contracts you already have running, work that is done once and then forgotten about.
Spain's State Public Employment Service (SEPE) has already published its official template for the information document, which is a fair starting point although the decree does not oblige anyone to use it and does not treat the duty as met for whoever does (the first additional provision says that publishing it conditions nothing about what is owed). What governs is article 3.2, not the form. Set beside the decree, the template asks for less in four sections (training, algorithmic systems, the collective agreement and Social Security). It also has no place for the employee's acknowledgment of receipt, which article 6.2 leaves to the employer to prove. I go through it section by section in my note on the SEPE template.
If your company needs to review its hiring process end to end, you can see how I work on these matters in the business area. What has to be handed over, section by section, is in the guide to the mandatory information when hiring. And while you are looking at who signs what, this is a good moment to check something that is usually taken on trust and is often wrong: how directors and shareholders are classified for social security.
Editorial responsibility: Carles Jiménez, Spanish lawyer (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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