Spanish bereavement leave: how many days and how they count

The short answer

For the death of a spouse, a registered partner or a relative up to the second degree by blood or marriage, the Spanish Workers' Statute gives two days, and four if you need to travel for it.¹ The five days you see quoted in so many places do exist, but they belong to the cause next door.

Why everybody says five days

Until 29 June 2023, sub-paragraph b) of paragraph 3 of article 37 read: "Two days for the death, serious accident or serious illness, hospitalisation or day surgery requiring home rest". One sub-paragraph, two days, both causes together.

Article 127.3 of Royal Decree-Law 5/2023 split it in two.² Sub-paragraph b) kept accidents, serious illness and hospitalisation, and rose to five days. A brand-new sub-paragraph b bis) took the death of a relative and left it at two, with the extension of two further days when travel is needed.¹

Hence the confusion, and it is a confusion with a date: the two causes shared a sub-paragraph until just over three years ago, so the sentence "the leave went from two days to five" is true of one and false of the other. If what has happened is a death, the statutory figure is still two days.

How far the family reaches, and an asymmetry worth knowing

The limit is the second degree by blood or marriage. Parents, children and parents-in-law are first degree; grandparents, grandchildren, siblings and siblings-in-law are second. Aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews are third degree and cousins are fourth, and they fall outside.

And there is a difference between the two consecutive sub-paragraphs that almost nobody mentions. Sub-paragraph b), the hospitalisation one, additionally reaches two further cases: the blood relative of the registered partner, and any other person who lives with the worker in the same home and requires their effective care. Sub-paragraph b bis), the bereavement one, repeats neither of those clauses.¹

The result is hard to read and worth knowing in advance: for the hospitalisation of the person you live with and care for, the Statute gives you five days; for their death, none.

Working or calendar days: the law is silent, and only for you

Sub-paragraph a) says "Fifteen calendar days in the case of marriage or registering a civil partnership", using that word. Sub-paragraph b) says "Five days". Sub-paragraph b bis) says "Two days". Nothing more.¹

In the Basic Statute of the Public Employee, by contrast, every entitlement carries its basis in writing: five working days, four working days, three working days.³ That is why the question is a recurring dispute in the private sector and a certainty in the public one, and why so many searches end on a figure that is not the reader's.

Where the Statute is silent, the collective agreement decides. And the reading paragraph 3 itself supports is that the right consists of "being absent from work": a day on which you would not have worked is hardly a day of absence. That is a reading of the text, not a written rule, so the first thing to do is open the agreement.

The same thing, for a civil servant

The comparison is useful because half the pages that come up when you search for these days belong to a public administration describing its own staff.

Three things stand out.³ The first is that the civil servant has the counting basis in writing and the private-sector employee does not. The second is that what moves the figure differs in each regime: the Statute looks at whether you need to travel, and the Basic Statute looks at whether the event happened in another town. And the third is that the advantage is not always on the same side: for the death of a grandparent, the private-sector employee has two days and the article 48 paragraph does not reach that far.

Personal days are not in the Workers' Statute

Paragraph 3 of article 37 has nine sub-paragraphs: a) marriage, b) hospitalisation, b bis) death, c) moving home, d) unavoidable public duty, e) union duties, f) antenatal appointments and birth preparation, g) being unable to reach the workplace, and g) again, organ donation.¹

There is no sub-paragraph for personal days or discretionary days. The six days a year everybody cites are in article 48.k) of the Basic Statute of the Public Employee and are a civil-service entitlement.³

For a private-sector employee they exist only if the collective agreement grants them, and then the rules are the agreement's: how many there are, whether they expire on 31 December, and how much notice is required.

Two new entitlements, and an official typo

The article has grown twice in little more than a month, and neither norm renumbered the sub-paragraphs.

Final provision 2.1 of Royal Decree-Law 8/2024 added, with effect from 30 November 2024, leave of up to four days when the worker cannot reach the workplace because of recommendations or prohibitions by the authorities, or when there is a serious and imminent risk, including disasters and adverse weather.⁴ After those four days the leave continues until the circumstances disappear, and if the work can be done remotely the company may arrange that instead.

A month later, article 2 of Law 6/2024 added another entitlement, for the time needed for the preparatory acts of donating organs or tissue, in force from 3 March 2025.⁵ Because sub-paragraph g) was already taken, paragraph 3 now has two sub-paragraphs g) and no h), and the consolidated text of the Official State Gazette flags it with a "[sic]" of its own.

There is a third movement that explains why the guides written in those months contradict each other: paragraph 4, on nursing leave, was amended by a December 2023 decree-law that Congress repealed in January 2024, leaving the amendment without effect, and it had to be re-enacted in May.⁷

The birth of a child is no longer on this list

It is worth saying because until 2019 it was. The original 2015 text opened sub-paragraph b) with "Two days for the birth of a child and for the death...", and article 2.9 of Royal Decree-Law 6/2019 took it out.⁶

Since then the birth of a child is not employer-paid leave but a suspension of the contract under article 48 of the Statute, with a benefit paid by the Social Security and its own rules on length and timing. It is a different right, with a different duration and a different payer, which is why it appears on this page only to be distinguished.

What you have to do to get it: notice and proof

Paragraph 3 does not grant the leave unconditionally. Its opening sentence says the worker may be absent "with prior notice and justification", and those words govern every entitlement on the list.¹

In practice they mean two different things at two different moments. Notice comes first or immediately: you have to tell the company that you will be absent and why, as soon as possible. Justification can come afterwards, and it is the document proving the cause: the death certificate or the funeral home's certificate for a death, the hospital's note for an admission, the family book or the registry certificate for a marriage.

What the law does not do is set a deadline or a form for either. It requires no particular document, no set number of days' notice and no specific medium. The collective agreement usually fixes that, and where it does not, being able to show that you gave notice is enough. It is worth keeping the message: the leave is a right, but a conditional one, and it is the worker who has to establish the cause.

Family emergencies have their own paragraph, and it gives no days

Alongside the list of entitlements there is another right that is often confused with it and works differently. Paragraph 9 of the same article 37 allows absence on grounds of force majeure when it is necessary for urgent family reasons relating to relatives or people living with you, in the case of illness or accident making your immediate presence indispensable.¹

The difference is the unit. Paragraph 9 does not grant days: it grants the right to be paid for the hours of absence equivalent to four days a year. How those hours are distributed across the year is fixed by the collective agreement or, failing that, by an agreement between the company and the workers' legal representatives.

It is the right to reach for when you have to leave for a couple of hours and come back, which is precisely the case the list of entitlements handles badly, because there the causes are measured in whole days. And note that it also reaches people living with you, like the hospitalisation sub-paragraph and unlike the bereavement one.

A worked example with real numbers

A private-sector employee's father dies on Friday 2 October 2026. The funeral is in her own city, so she does not need to travel.

Sub-paragraph b bis) gives her two days.¹ Because the Statute does not say on what basis they are counted, the result depends on what her collective agreement says:

• If the agreement counts calendar days, the leave covers Friday the 2nd and Saturday the 3rd, and she is back at work on Monday the 5th.
• If it counts working days and the leave starts on the first working day, it covers Friday the 2nd and Monday the 5th, and she returns on Tuesday the 6th.

A whole day of difference, on the same sub-paragraph and the same death.

Had the funeral been in another province and required travel, the second sentence of the sub-paragraph extends the period by two days: four in total.

And the same loss, for a civil servant, is resolved by article 48.a) of the Basic Statute of the Public Employee: three working days if it happens in the same town and five if it happens in another.³ More days, on a basis her rule does state, but only up to the first degree.