Spain has no specific general labour law covering artists or cultural workers. A new Statute for Artists is being developed by a Commission in the Spanish Parliament. The preliminary report was presented in June 2018.
There are, however, a number of regulations affecting artists as producers of culture. These include labour regulations covering people working in public entertainment. The consolidated text of the Workers Charter passed in 2015 (2/2015 Royal Legislative Decree) contains special provisions for performing artists (Article 2.e), 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 equally in all artistic sectors and leaving the development of the rights and obligations to collective negotiation between the parties involved in 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 (updated in July 2018) is also applicable to artists and cultural creators.
There is also no specific labour 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.
Irregular labour situations in the artistic sector are very common, even in the public sector, leading to labour conflicts that have gone to court. For instance, the temporary contracts for the artistic staff of the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM) — which cannot exceed three years (2/2015 Royal Legislative Decree) – don’t match the duration of the artistic projects. This resulted in judicial disputes that ended in April 2018 when a new regulation was passed (Fifth additional disposition of the 2/2018 Royal Decree-Law), adapting the temporary contracts’ duration to the specific artistic projects.
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