Contract Review Spain 2026: Rental, Purchase & Employment

Spanish rental contracts: the LAU basics

Most long-term residential lets in Spain are governed by the LAU, the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos, which sets a baseline of tenant protection that no contract clause can simply override. For a standard vivienda habitual tenancy, your primary residence, the law guarantees a minimum term, currently five years if your landlord is an individual and seven years if the landlord is a company, unless you as the tenant choose to leave earlier. If neither side gives proper notice at the right time, the contract can extend automatically for further periods under what is called tacita reconduccion.

Rent increases during that mandatory term are not a free-for-all either: any review clause has to track a proper reference index rather than letting the landlord set a new figure unilaterally each year. A contract that reads well on the surface can still bury a rent-review mechanism that would not survive a challenge, which is one of the first things we check.

Short lets aimed at tourists sit under different rules entirely (see our Tourist Licence Andalucia guide if you are the one renting out a property that way). What we review here is the long-term residential contract you, as a tenant, are being asked to sign.

The temporada trap: why the label on your contract matters

This is the single issue we flag most often for foreign tenants in Malaga, and it deserves its own section because so few people arrive in Spain knowing to check it. Spanish law recognises a separate category, the arrendamiento de temporada, a seasonal or temporary-purpose let intended for a genuinely short-term need: a work posting, a university term, a medical treatment, a holiday stay. A temporada contract sits largely outside the LAU’s protective regime. There is no mandatory five or seven-year minimum term, eviction at the end of the agreed period is far faster and simpler, and the rent-increase caps that apply to a standard tenancy generally do not.

The trap is this: some landlords, particularly in tourist-heavy parts of Andalucia, label what is really an ordinary, ongoing residence as a temporada contract specifically to avoid giving the tenant standard LAU protections, while still charging a normal or even premium long-term rent. A tenant who is actually living there full time, working locally, with no genuinely temporary purpose, may in reality be in a standard tenancy regardless of what the contract calls itself.

What actually controls the classification is not the label the landlord chose, it is the real, substantive purpose of your occupancy. Spanish courts look behind the wording at how the property is genuinely being used. If your situation is really an open-ended primary residence dressed up as “temporada” on paper, that mismatch is exactly the kind of thing a contract review is meant to catch before you sign, not after a dispute starts.

Deposits, guarantees, and abusive clauses

The statutory deposit, fianza, for a standard residential tenancy is one month’s rent, which the landlord is required to lodge with the relevant regional deposit-guarantee body rather than simply hold privately. Landlords can also ask for an additional guarantee on top of that statutory deposit, commonly an extra one or two months for longer contracts, but we check whether the amount requested and the way it is documented actually holds up, since vague or inflated “extra guarantee” clauses are a frequent source of dispute when a tenancy ends.

Beyond the deposit itself, our review looks for the recurring patterns of abusive clauses we see again and again in Spanish rental contracts offered to foreigners:

• The tenant waiving the statutory minimum term outright
• Rent increases tied to something other than the proper legal reference index
• The tenant made responsible for structural repairs, or community fees, that are legally the landlord’s responsibility
• Penalty clauses for early termination that are disproportionate to any real loss the landlord would suffer
• Automatic-renewal traps buried in small print, with unclear notice requirements to opt out
• Agency fees charged to the tenant when the agency was actually engaged by the landlord, a practice the 2023 Housing Law shifted back onto landlords

None of these automatically void a contract, but each is a point worth negotiating, or at minimum understanding clearly, before you sign and before your deposit changes hands.

Purchase reservation and arras contracts

If you are buying property in Spain, the first document you are likely to sign is not the full purchase deed at the notary, it is a reservation or deposit contract known as arras, typically for around 10% of the agreed price. Its wording matters enormously because it sets out what happens if either side backs out before the final signing.

• Arras penitenciales, the default under Article 1454 of the Codigo Civil unless the contract states otherwise, let either party withdraw: the buyer forfeits the deposit, or the seller returns it doubled.
• Arras confirmatorias are treated as part payment toward the final price, with no unilateral right to simply walk away; a breach lets the other side sue for enforcement or damages instead.
• Arras penales sit in between, with specific, negotiated penalty terms written into the contract itself.

Which type your reservation contract actually is, and whether the drafting matches what you think you agreed to verbally, changes your options enormously if the purchase falls through. This is exactly the kind of clause our review is built to catch before you commit a deposit you may not be able to recover. See our full Buying Property in Spain guide and Buying Property in Malaga guide for the whole purchase process, and our Buying a Home fixed-price package if you want full conveyancing handled end to end rather than a standalone review.

Employment offer review basics

Foreign hires moving to Spain for a job often see their employment contract for the first time only once a visa or sponsorship process is already underway, which makes it harder to negotiate changes. A review before you sign, or before your employer files your Work Visa Spain paperwork, checks:

• Contract type: indefinido (permanent) or temporal (fixed-term), and whether a temporary label is even legally valid for the role you are being hired into
• Categoria profesional and convenio colectivo: whether your offered salary meets the floor set by the applicable sector collective bargaining agreement
• Probationary period (periodo de prueba): whether its length matches the legal maximum for your contract type and role
• Working hours, overtime, and notice periods
• Non-compete and confidentiality clauses: whether they are actually enforceable, since Spanish law requires financial compensation for a genuine post-contract non-compete to hold up

We flag anything that looks off against these points and give you specific questions to raise with your employer before you sign, not just a general comment that “it looks fine.”

How the remote review works in 48 hours

You do not need to be in Malaga, or in Spain at all, to use this service.

• Send us the contract as a PDF or clear photos, by email or secure upload
• We review it within two business days
• You receive a marked-up, plain-English (or Spanish) summary flagging the clauses that matter, what is missing, and specific questions to raise with the other party
• An optional follow-up call to walk through the findings together

We review, we do not draft. If what you actually need is a new contract written from scratch rather than an existing one checked, tell us on your free call and we will scope that separately.