Annual Leave in Spain 2026: Vacation Days & Rules

Article 38 of the Spanish Workers' Statute (Estatuto de los Trabajadores) sets a minimum of 30 calendar days of paid annual leave per year. Because they are calendar days, weekends and public holidays count, so on a Monday-to-Friday week they work out at roughly 22 working days. Your collective agreement or contract can improve on this minimum, never reduce it.

Rule	What the law says
Minimum entitlement	30 calendar days a year (art. 38.1 ET)
Payment in lieu	Leave cannot be replaced by money while the contract is in force (art. 38.1 ET). It can only be replaced by money when the employment relationship ends (art. 7.2 Directive 2003/88/EC)
Who sets the dates	Employer and employee by mutual agreement, following your collective agreement's planning; if they disagree, the labour court decides (art. 38.2 ET)
Notice	The employee must know their dates at least 2 months in advance (art. 38.3 ET)
Sick during annual leave	If leave overlaps with temporary incapacity, it is taken later; for non-occupational illness, up to 18 months after the end of the year (art. 38.3 ET)
Public holidays	Separate from annual leave: up to 14 public holidays a year, 2 of them local (art. 37.2 ET)

Started or leaving mid-year? Work out how many vacation days you get with our free calculator.

To plan the year around your region's public holidays, see our Spain 2026 public holidays by region.

Article 37.3 of the Statute, as amended by Royal Decree-Law 5/2023, lets employees take time off with full pay, with prior notice and justification, for these reasons:

• Marriage or registered partnership: 15 calendar days.
• Serious accident or illness, hospitalisation, or surgery without hospitalisation requiring rest at home of a spouse, partner or relatives up to the second degree (or another person living with you who needs your care): 5 days.
• Death of a spouse, partner or relatives up to the second degree: 2 days, plus 2 more if you need to travel.
• Moving house: 1 day.
• Unavoidable public duty (including voting): the time required.
• Union or staff-representative duties: as set by law or collective agreement.
• Prenatal check-ups and childbirth classes (and mandatory sessions in adoption or fostering): the time required.
• Being unable to reach work because of restrictions from the authorities or serious risk, including a disaster or adverse weather: up to 4 days, extended while the situation lasts.
• Preparatory procedures for organ or tissue donation: the time required.

Article 37.9 adds force majeure leave for urgent family reasons (an illness or accident that makes your immediate presence essential), paid up to the equivalent of 4 days a year, and article 37.4 gives one hour a day of breastfeeding/infant-care leave until the baby is 9 months old.

Each leave should be recorded with its reason and length: that is how you show an inspector that absences were justified. A vacation and absence management tool keeps it documented without paperwork.

Following Royal Decree-Law 9/2025 of 29 July, article 48.4 of the Statute suspends the employment contract of each parent for 19 weeks after a birth (32 weeks for single-parent families), split as follows:

• 6 mandatory weeks, uninterrupted and full-time, immediately after the birth.
• 11 weeks that can be taken in weekly blocks, together or separately, until the child turns 12 months.
• 2 weeks of childcare that can be spread out until the child turns 8.

The same 19 weeks apply to adoption, pre-adoptive custody and fostering (art. 48.5). Separately, the parental leave in article 48 bis lets each parent take up to 8 weeks, continuous or not, until the child turns 8, with 10 days' notice to the employer (or whatever the collective agreement sets).

For employers, what matters is recording the exact dates of every suspension or leave and adjusting the team's schedules and shifts accordingly.

• Reduced hours for childcare (art. 37.6): anyone directly caring for a child under 12, or a person with a disability who does not work, can cut their daily hours by between one eighth and one half, with a proportional pay cut.
• Voluntary leave of absence (excedencia voluntaria, art. 46.2): with at least one year of service, between 4 months and 5 years; it can only be requested again 4 years after the previous one ended.
• Personal days (días de asuntos propios): not in the Statute. They exist only if your collective agreement or contract includes them, which also sets how many and how to request them.

Knowing your collective agreement is essential: many improve the legal minimums for annual leave and paid leave, and those days must also be reflected in the working-time record so the hours add up.

Spain's Law on Social Order Infringements and Sanctions (LISOS) classes breaches of the rules on rest, annual leave, paid leave and working-time registration as a serious infringement (art. 7.5). Serious infringements carry fines of €751 to €7,500 depending on their degree (art. 40.1.b).

To avoid mistakes, keep vacation requests, paid leave and each worker's public holidays in one place:

• Employees request days off from the app and the manager approves or rejects them with one click.
• The calendar shows approved leave, your region's public holidays and hours worked, so shifts don't overlap.
• Working-time corrections follow a request-and-approve flow with full traceability.

Ficha.Work is time tracking software that brings all of this together from €1/user/month + VAT, with a 14-day free trial (payment method required, nothing charged until day 15). If you run a bar, restaurant or hotel, see how time tracking for hospitality handles split shifts and seasonal staff.

• Annual leave: at least 30 calendar days a year, not replaceable by money while the contract lasts.
• Paid leave: 15 days for marriage, 5 for a relative's serious accident or illness, 2 for a death (4 with travel), 1 for moving house and up to 4 days a year for force majeure.
• Birth: 19 weeks per parent, 6 of them mandatory after the birth.
• Fines: serious infringement, €751 to €7,500.

Sources: Workers' Statute (BOE, consolidated text; last update published 03/10/2026), arts. 37, 38, 46 and 48; LISOS (BOE), arts. 7.5 and 40.1; Directive 2003/88/EC, art. 7. This article is for information only and does not replace advice from your employment advisor or the terms of your collective agreement.