Spain's government says it will approve the new digital time tracking rules immediately

Spain’s government has announced it will immediately approve the new digital time-tracking rules. Labour minister Yolanda Diaz confirmed it on 9 September: she said there is an agreement with the Ministry of Economy and with the PSOE to move the decree forward once the legal changes requested by the Council of State are incorporated. The text is in its final legal-adaptation stage.

First, it helps to separate what is new from what already exists. Time tracking has been mandatory since 2019 for every company. What this decree adds is the requirement that the record be digital, accessible in real time to the Labour Inspectorate and to workers’ legal representatives, and tamper-proof. The paper roster and the spreadsheet filled in at the end of the month would no longer be valid.

Why the government is speeding up now

Diaz framed the urgency around one figure: Spain sees around 2.5 million unpaid overtime hours every week. Her argument is that the absence of a reliable digital record hurts the worker who is not paid for that excess and, at the same time, works as unfair competition against companies that do comply. When a record can be redone later, the Inspectorate has no way to prove that excess time, and neither does the worker.

Union pressure has also weighed in. UGT had been demanding that the government reactivate the process and send the text to the Council of State, and its general secretary, Pepe Alvarez, warned that union patience has a limit. CCOO and UGT have made clear they are watching the timeline, the same line they drew with the September ultimatum.

What held the decree back until now

The passage through the Council of State was not a formality. The advisory body issued observations that required amending the text before approval, to avoid it being born exposed to an immediate legal challenge. Among the points discussed during processing are the impact on small businesses, how it fits with worker data protection, and the legal form itself, that is, whether a matter of this scale should be regulated by royal decree or by a law passed in Parliament.

The government maintains that these objections have already been resolved in the version it will bring to approval. The final text will show how each one turned out once published, especially the handling of personal data, which is where imprecise wording would cause companies the most trouble.

What it means for your company

Until the decree is published in the official gazette, the current obligation still applies. The direction of the change, however, is already set. A time-tracking system that meets the new standard has to do three things: keep a digital record of every clock-in and clock-out, be shown to the Inspectorate without being reconstructed first, and prevent anything already recorded from being modified without leaving a trace of who changed it and when.

A company that still clocks in on paper or in a spreadsheet will have to switch systems. A company that already tracks hours digitally and traceably will only need to verify that it meets the final details of the decree once they are published.

With Cleverfy, each clock-in is recorded with date, hour and minute, cannot be altered without leaving a trace, and the information is ready to export whenever the Inspectorate asks for it. If you want to get ahead before the decree takes effect, you can try it free for 14 days. And if you want to understand the penalty framework, we cover it in what fines you face for not keeping a time record.

⚠️ Legal notice: this article summarises public statements and announcements for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. The royal decree mentioned has not been approved or published as of the date of this article; its final terms may differ from what was announced.

Sources: statements by the Labour minister on 9 September 2026, the Council of State opinion on the draft royal decree on time tracking, and articles 34 and 35 of the Spanish Workers’ Statute.

Image: Yolanda Díaz at a UGT event, photo by Photocommons, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.