Spain
Equal Employment Opportunity

The primary national laws prohibiting employment discrimination and harassment on the basis of any protected characteristic are:

• The Workers’ Statute,
• Law 15/2022, for Equal Treatment and Non-discrimination,
• The Constitutional Act 3/2007, for Effective Equality between Men and Women, and
• The Law Guaranteeing Sexual Freedom

Workplace bullying is subject to penalty under the Penal Code.

Additionally, Spanish law includes measures related to equality between men and women in the workplace.

Royal Decree 902/2020, of October 13, on equal pay between women and men, requires employers of any size to create and maintain compensation registers. The compensation register must include average and median base salaries and extraordinary payments for one calendar-year period, broken down by gender, professional category, seniority level, job position or any other applicable classification system.

The compensation register:

• Must be updated annually
• Should not identify salaries of particular employees
• Must be made available, at their request, to employees’ legal representatives or the employees themselves if there are no legal representatives at the company’s premises.
  
  

Additionally, if a worker alleges that the employer’s compensation practices violate the principle of equal pay for men and women, the worker may bring an action in employment court.

Royal Decree 901/2020, of October 13, regulating equality plans and their registration, requires employers with more than 50 employees to implement an equality plan.

The equality plan must:

• Describe the employer’s remuneration or compensation policies
• Provide for a salary audit to determine inequalities in compensation between women and men
• Identify differences in compensation between women and men carrying out the same duties
• Provide for measures to mitigate or correct any identified differences in compensation, including by negotiation between the employer and employees’ representatives or trade unions 

Employers must update the equality plan when it establishes new measures to address differences in compensation between women and men and when the work force changes significantly due to new hires or terminations.

In addition, employers must file the equality plan with the Labor Authority.