Díaz wants the clock-in decree and minimum wage before 29N

Legal note: This article is for information only and does not constitute legal advice. As of 14 October 2026 the Royal Decree on digital time tracking has not been approved by the Council of Ministers and has not been published in the BOE (Spain’s official gazette).

El Español takes it as a given while La Vanguardia sees it up in the air

On Monday 12 October, El Español reported that Yolanda Díaz, Spain’s Labour Minister, expects to approve two things before the general election on 29 November: the 2027 minimum wage (known in Spain as the SMI) and the new time-tracking rules. “Government sources insist that digital time tracking will see the light of day before the election,” the paper wrote. In its account, the differences between the Labour and Economy ministries had been settled “apparently, for some time”. According to the report, the teams of Díaz and First Deputy Prime Minister Carlos Cuerpo “have buried the hatchet and there will be electronic (and unalterable) time tracking before the election”.

On the same day, La Vanguardia’s economics editor, Jaume Masdeu, went through the announcements the Government wants to line up before the vote (the SMI rise and the pension uprating) and singled out time tracking as the least certain of the three. “Every promise about its approval has been broken,” he wrote, and “now nobody dares to make a forecast”. He blamed the deadlock on “the resistance of the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo, to the rule, carried over into the harsh opinion issued by the Council of State”, and concluded that the decree “is running so late that it may miss the last train of this parliamentary term”.

On Tuesday 13 October the Council of Ministers (the Spanish Cabinet) held its first meeting since those two reports, and the decree was not on the agenda. The only Labour items in the official summary were an appointment and the fast-tracking of grants from SEPE, the public employment service, to town councils in Andalusia and Extremadura hit by the storms.

The Council of State’s opinion is what holds it up now

Since June, Labour and Economy have announced three agreements on the text, and the decree has still not reached the Council of Ministers. El Español’s “apparently, for some time” rests on its own report of 19 June, when Díaz accepted the changes Economy had asked for. On 24 July the two ministries agreed to take the decree to the Council of Ministers in September. On 9 September Díaz confirmed the agreement with Economy and the PSOE, and at the end of that month sources close to the Prime Minister’s office denied any clash and described the two deputy prime ministers working on the text together with the State Attorney’s Office. The decree was not approved in July or in September.

The remaining hurdle is the opinion the Council of State, Spain’s highest advisory body, adopted on 19 March, which concludes that “the proposed Royal Decree should not be approved”. La Vanguardia puts that down to Cuerpo, but the opinion is not binding and the Government could approve the decree without the body’s endorsement. Labour has chosen to rewrite the text so that the Council will accept it, because the CEOE employers’ association has already announced it will challenge the decree in court, and a regulation approved against the Council of State’s advice reaches the Supreme Court with one more argument against it. On 2 October Joaquín Pérez Rey, Labour’s Secretary of State, said those changes were finished and pointed to October (we covered it here). Labour has not said whether the text will be sent back to the Council of State. If it is, the new opinion would have to arrive before the last Council of Ministers meeting ahead of the election, on 24 November.

The minimum wage has a date; the time-tracking decree does not

On 8 October El Confidencial reported, citing ministry sources, that Labour wants to close a labour package before the election with the minimum wage and time recording as its flagships. For the SMI it gives a timetable. The expert panel has until 31 October (or the first days of November) to propose the increase, then come talks with employers and unions, and the decree could go to the Council of Ministers on 10 November, three days before the campaign starts. According to the same paper, the Government would not be able to publicise the rise during the campaign.

Neither Labour nor the Prime Minister’s office has given time tracking a date beyond Pérez Rey’s “October”. If the Government keeps to its Tuesday meetings, six remain before 29 November: 20 and 27 October and 3, 10, 17 and 24 November. The last two fall in the middle of the campaign. From 30 November the Government will be a caretaker government and the Government Act limits what it can approve, as we explained in Spain’s clock-in decree can still pass before 29 November.

If it is approved, the fine stays the same

El Confidencial added that a “more watered-down version” is to be expected, and pointed out that, since it lacks the force of law, the decree will not be able to raise penalties or calculate them per worker, as the Government intended at the start of the parliamentary term.

The fines for time recording are set in the LISOS (Law on Infringements and Penalties in the Social Order), which has the force of law. Article 25 of the Spanish Constitution and article 27 of Law 40/2015 prevent a regulation from creating new infringements or penalties. Counting one infringement per affected worker, with fines of up to €10,000, was part of the bill to cut the working week to 37.5 hours, which Congress threw out on 10 September 2025. It was left out when Labour revived digital time recording through a regulation. With or without the decree, failing to keep the record, or keeping it badly, will remain a serious infringement punishable by €751 to €7,500 per infringement, not per worker. The number of people affected only serves to set the fine within that range.

What the decree would change are the requirements for the record. Article 34.9 of the Workers’ Statute, Spain’s core employment law, does not currently require any particular format, while the draft makes the record digital, with an audit trail of any change and remote access for the Labour Inspectorate. A paper sheet full of crossings-out already carries little weight in overtime claims (in Catalonia a company was ordered to pay for 928 hours over a record like that), and under the decree it would no longer be an accepted system.

Nor would it apply the day after it appears in the BOE. Under the Government Act, rules that impose new obligations on businesses take effect on 2 January or 1 July, unless the regulatory impact report justifies another date, and Pérez Rey has tied enforcement to a ministerial order setting the technical requirements, which still has no public draft. Every deadline missed since January is listed in our guide to the status of the time-tracking Royal Decree.

How Cleverfy handles it

Cleverfy is time-tracking and working-hours recording software for SMEs and self-employed people with staff. It meets what the draft decree requires (digital clock-in, corrections with an audit trail and access for the Inspectorate) and is a valid time record under the current rules.

• Clock-in from the mobile app, the web or a shared tablet with a PIN, with the exact time of arrival, departure and breaks.
• On-site or remote work, recorded on every clock-in.
• Correction history with the original value, the date and who made the change; the employee accepts or rejects each correction.
• Access for the Labour Inspectorate, which can view and export the records.
• Four-year retention and a compliance report.

From €1.20 per employee per month on the annual plan (see pricing and all features).

Try it free for 14 days →

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Sources:

• El Español, 12 October 2026
• La Vanguardia, 12 October 2026
• El Confidencial, 8 October 2026
• Council of Ministers summary, 13 October 2026 (La Moncloa)
• Europa Press, 24 July 2026
• Spanish Constitution, art. 25 (BOE)
• Law 40/2015 on the Legal Regime of the Public Sector, art. 27 (BOE)
• Law 50/1997 on the Government, arts. 21 and 23 (BOE)
• Workers’ Statute, art. 34.9 (BOE)
• LISOS (Law on Infringements and Penalties in the Social Order), arts. 7.5, 39 and 40 (BOE)

Photo: Yolanda Díaz, Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labour and Social Economy, holding her ministerial portfolio on the steps of the Council of Ministers building (November 2023). Pool Moncloa / José Manuel Álvarez. La Moncloa, via Wikimedia Commons, reproduction authorised provided the source is cited. Cropped image.