Spain/ 5.1 General legislation  

5.1.6 Labour laws

Spanish law has no a general labour law covering artists or cultural workers. There are, however, a number of regulations affecting artists as producers of culture. They include, for example, labour regulations covering people working in public entertainment. The current Workers Charter passed in 1980 contains special provisions for performing artists, expanded upon in greater detail in a Decree of 1985 (1435/1985 Royal Decree). This Decree establishes a non-exhaustive regulation of the content of labour relations, considering only those aspects that can be treated in the same way in all artistic sectors and leaving the development of the rights and obligations to collective negotiation between the parties to this special relation. At the state level, there are also collective agreements referring to actors and film producers (since 1990), graphic arts and publishing-houses (since 1997), film distributors (since 1997), and audiovisual production. At the level of the autonomous communities, collective agreements have been signed in Catalonia, Madrid, Galicia, the Balearics, La Rioja and Navarre.

The 56/2003 Act on Employment (its more recent update was published in July 2012) is also applicable to artists and cultural creators.

There is no specific legislation for self-employed artists in Spain. There are, however, a few tax provisions available for self-employed artists related to income tax deductions, income averaging, company tax benefits and reduced levels of value-added tax (see chapter 5.1.5 and chapter 5.1.7).

See also comparative information provided in the Compendium "Themes!" section under "Status of Artists".

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