Your Spanish operation, live in 90 days.

The first thing nobody tells you straight

“An SL in 48 hours” sounds nice, but it’s not realistic. Six to twelve weeks is the truth.

The corporate part really is fast: we compress the deed, the registry and the tax registration into one to two weeks. What decides your actual date is everything sitting either side of it, and neither of those two things is the notary.

We’ve written up how long it really takes to set up a company in Spain, step by step, with the four bottlenecks that decide your date, and when the company is ready to hire, invoice and pay.

Five ways in

There are five ways to be in Spain. Most companies pick one without knowing the other four exist.

The route decides your tax position, your liability, how fast you can start and how much you’ll file every year. It is worth twenty minutes at the beginning and expensive to change later.

1. 01 — A Spanish subsidiary

   sociedad limitada, SL

   Your own Spanish company, owned by the parent. Separate legal personality, so the parent’s liability is limited to what it puts in. It can hire, invoice Spanish customers, sign leases and bid for contracts. This is what the large majority of foreign groups choose, and unless there’s a specific reason otherwise, it’s what we’ll recommend.

2. 02 — A branch

   sucursal

   The parent company itself, operating in Spain. No separate legal personality, so the parent stays directly liable, and the parent’s own accounts get drawn into Spanish filing. Lighter to establish, heavier to live with. It suits a genuinely temporary presence or a case where the parent’s own authorisation has to carry into Spain.

3. 03 — A representative office

   oficina de representación

   A presence without trading. It can research, promote and coordinate, but it cannot sell or invoice, and the moment it starts doing either, the tax position changes. Useful for testing a market. Not useful for long.

4. 04 — No entity, just a VAT registration

   If you sell into Spain but have no people and no premises here, you may need nothing more than a non-resident VAT registration. Much lighter than a company, and it’s worth establishing before you incorporate anything, because a company created a year early costs you filings and attention for no benefit.

5. 05 — No entity, someone else employs your team

   employer of record

   A third party employs your people in Spain on your behalf. Fast, simple for one or two people, and it stops working when you need to invoice Spanish customers, when headcount makes a per-person fee expensive, or when someone asks whether your people here create a taxable presence for the parent.

We’ll tell you which of the five fits in the first call, including when the answer is that you don’t need an entity yet.

Several of these require a person here before you have anyone here — a representative who can sign, receive and appear. That is a role, not a formality, and we take it on where it’s appropriate, under written instruction for each act, with funds on account for any payment, and under our professional indemnity. Javier Estévez, our founding partner and a corporate lawyer, decides with you which roles your structure actually needs.

The half of this page that usually goes wrong

Your first Spanish employee, priced before you make the offer.

Setting up the company is the part everyone does. But hiring into it is the part that can cost money and headaches for years if it’s done wrong. Before your offer goes out, three things must be settled:

1. Which collective agreement applies to you.

   Not the one you’d expect — the one set by your activity and your province. It fixes minimum pay, working hours, extra payments and notice periods for your team, and you never signed it. Agreements cover 92% of Spanish workers.

2. What the person actually costs.

   Employer social security of roughly 31% on top of gross, against about 15% in the UK and 7.65% in the US, plus whatever your agreement adds. Simulated in writing before you commit to a number.

3. What it would cost to part ways.

   Calculated at the same time as the offer, not eighteen months later. Unfair dismissal runs to 33 days of salary per year of service, capped at 24 months’ pay.

Questions we’re asked before every landing.

Isn’t 90 days too long for a set-up?

Thirty days is a fair description of the corporate steps: incorporation, tax number, registrations, bank. We do those in six to twelve weeks and the honest constraint is the tax IDs for your foreign directors and the bank’s checks on your parent, neither of which any firm controls. Our ninety days covers something different. It ends with your first employee hired under the correct collective agreement, your first payroll run, your first tax filing submitted, your books open from the date of incorporation, and your first report delivered to your parent in its own format. A company that exists is not a company that works. We commit to the second one.

Do I need to travel to Spain?

No. The NIE, the powers and the signature are all handled through power of attorney and apostille, prepared in your country. Not one of our landings in the last two years has required the client to fly over.

How long does it really take?

Six to twelve weeks to be fully operational for a standard foreign-owned subsidiary, and able to invoice from around week six or seven. The deed itself takes a day once the paperwork is in order; the NIEs, the parent company’s Spanish tax number and the bank decide the rest, which is why we start all of them on day one.

Subsidiary or branch?

A subsidiary (sociedad limitada) limits the parent’s liability and is what the large majority of foreign groups choose. A branch is lighter to set up and heavier to live with, because the parent remains liable and the reporting burden lands back on it. We’ll give you the comparison in the Fast-Track call.

Can you work with our existing accounting system?

Yes. Where the group runs SAP, Dynamics or Sage, we work and report inside your system. Bookkeeping is a module here, not the foundation — if your parent already handles it, you can buy tax and employment on their own.

What happens if the bank refuses us?

It happens, and it is the reason we pre-validate the KYC file before the company exists rather than after. If a bank refuses, we go to the second one already prepared, and you lose days rather than weeks.

Can you handle our first employee’s Beckham Law application?

Yes, and it’s included for your first relocated employee. It has to be filed within six months of starting work, which is the deadline people most often discover too late.