Spain Time-Tracking Law 2026: When Does It Apply?

As of 17 October 2026, mandatory digital time registration is not in force: no rule requiring it has been published in the BOE (Spain's official gazette). What has been mandatory since 2019 is recording every worker's working day, every day.

• 12 May 2019: daily working-time registration applies to every company (art. 34.9 of the Workers' Statute, introduced by Royal Decree-Law 8/2019, applicable two months after its publication).
• 10 September 2025: Congress passes the motions to reject (178 in favour, 170 against) and Bill 121/000058 cutting the working week to 37.5 hours, which also strengthened time registration, is rejected.
• 10–20 October 2025: the Ministry of Labour opens a public consultation on a draft Royal Decree regulating time registration and requiring it to be done "by digital means".
• Today: that royal decree has still not been published in the BOE. According to the draft itself, it would enter into force twenty days after publication (fifth final provision of the draft).

In short: the obligation in force is the 2019 one, and the switch to digital-only registration depends on the Government approving and publishing the royal decree. We will update this guide when it is published.

For the up-to-date status with links to the BOE, see our guide to Spain's time-recording law.

Article 34.9 of the Workers' Statute requires every company to guarantee daily working-time registration, with each worker's exact start and end time. In addition:

• The record is organised and documented by collective agreement, company agreement or, failing that, by the employer after consulting worker representatives.
• Records are kept for four years and must be available to workers, their representatives and the Labour Inspectorate.
• For part-time contracts, hours are recorded day by day and totalled monthly, with a copy of the summary handed over with the payslip (art. 12.4.c).

Current law does not impose a specific format. The Ministry of Labour's guide to time registration states that "any system or means, on paper or electronic" is valid, provided it gives reliable information that cannot be altered or manipulated afterwards. That is why paper is still legal today, even though it is hard to prove with paper that nobody changed the data. See our practical work time registration guide.

This is the content of the draft submitted to public consultation. It is a draft: the final text may change and none of it is enforceable until it is published in the BOE.

• Digital registration: every company must guarantee daily registration "by digital means" (art. 2.1). If a justified technical incident temporarily prevents it, hours are recorded another way and moved to digital format afterwards (art. 4.d).
• Objective, reliable and accessible: entries cannot be modified without the authorisation of both employer and worker, and every change must leave a clear trace of what changed and who changed it (arts. 2.2 and 4.b).
• Minimum content: worker identification, type of working day, hour and minute of start and end of the day and of each non-working break, on-site or remote work, ordinary, overtime or complementary hours, daily and monthly totals, and the history of modifications (art. 3).
• Personal, immediate entries: each worker records their own working time when starting and finishing (art. 4.a).
• Access: workers can consult and get a copy of their records at any time, and the Labour Inspectorate must have immediate access, remotely and on site (art. 6).
• Protocol: after consulting worker representatives, the company writes a protocol describing the registration procedure and trains staff to use it (art. 7).
• Retention: four years (art. 4.f).

Penalties for not keeping work time records already exist today under current legislation. The Law on Social Order Infringements and Sanctions (LISOS) classes non-compliance as a serious infringement (art. 7.5), fined €751–1,500 at the minimum grade, €1,501–3,750 at the medium grade and €3,751–7,500 at the maximum grade (art. 40.1.b). The grade depends on criteria such as intent, prior Inspectorate requirements, turnover and the number of workers affected (art. 39.2). The draft Royal Decree on digital recording does not amend LISOS; the proposal to count one infringement per affected worker was part of the 37.5-hour bill, which Congress rejected in September 2025.

• Check you meet the current rule: a daily record with start and end time per worker, kept for four years and accessible.
• Review your collective agreement: it may set how the record is organised, how overtime is compensated or how breaks are recorded.
• If you use paper or spreadsheets, plan the switch calmly: the draft requires digital means, traceability of every change and immediate access; migrating now avoids a last-minute rush when it is published.
• Document corrections: every change to a clock-in should have an author, a reason and an approval.

To see what digital registration means in practice, read our page on digital time registration.

Ficha.Work is time tracking software that already records working time digitally: each worker clocks in with their own credentials (from the app, with an NFC base or by schedule), corrections go through a request flow with author, comment and approval, and monthly PDF and Excel reports are ready to hand to the Labour Inspectorate. Records are kept for at least four years.

It costs €1/user/month + VAT with every feature included, and you can try it free for 14 days (payment method required, nothing charged until day 15; cancel before then at no cost). When the final royal decree is published, we will update this guide with what changes.

Sources (checked 17/10/2026): Workers' Statute, arts. 12.4.c and 34.9; Royal Decree-Law 8/2019, sixth final provision; Congress of Deputies, Bill 121/000058; Ministry of Labour, public consultations; Draft Royal Decree on time registration; LISOS, arts. 7.5 and 40.1; Ministry of Labour guide to time registration.