Spain's internship contract: what replaced it

The short answer

Spain's internship contract stopped being called that in 2022. Article 11 of the Workers' Statute now governs a single formative contract with two modalities, and which one applies to you depends on one thing: whether you already hold the job's qualification¹. The difference is not a matter of names. On a collective agreement of 1,600 euros a month, the legal minimum is 793.65 euros on a first-year alternating contract and 1,600 euros on a full-time professional-practice one.

The old name no longer identifies anything

Start with the thing anyone can check in a click. The operative article 11 is titled «Contrato formativo», in the singular. Its paragraph 2 is the alternating-training contract and its paragraph 3 the contract «destined to acquire professional practice appropriate to the corresponding levels of study»¹. Across the whole text of the article the word «prácticas» does not appear once.

What used to be two contracts with names of their own are now two paragraphs of one article, and the rules of each are not interchangeable. That is the practical reason not to stay with the old name: someone asking for "a contrato de prácticas" is not asking for anything specific, and the conditions of the two paragraphs have little in common.

Which one you get: the qualification decides, and there is a clock

Letter a) of paragraph 2 reserves alternating training for «persons who lack the professional qualification recognised by the degrees or certificates required»². In other words: without the job's qualification, alternating training.

With the qualification, paragraph 3 applies, and with it a validity condition many people take for guidance. Its letter b) requires that the contract «must be agreed within three years, or five years where it is agreed with a person with a disability, following the end of the corresponding studies»³. Once that window closes, the qualification no longer supports a professional-practice contract, in that company or any other.

One intermediate route almost nobody mentions survives: the second paragraph of letter a) of paragraph 2 allows alternating training for someone who already holds another qualification, provided the contract is tied to new studies of a different formative level or a different productive sector, and they have had no earlier formative contract at that same level and sector².

The minimum pay: the two percentages multiply

This is the calculation almost no page gets right, and it is two letters of the same paragraph read together.

Letter m) sets pay at whatever the agreement says and, failing that, at no less than «sixty per cent in the first year nor seventy-five per cent in the second, with respect to that fixed in the agreement for the professional group and pay level corresponding to the duties performed, in proportion to effective working time»².

Letter i), four letters earlier, says that effective working time «may not exceed 65 per cent, during the first year, or 85 per cent, during the second, of the maximum working week provided for in the collective agreement»², because the rest of the time is training.

The two limits live in the same paragraph and apply one on top of the other. On a 1,600 euro agreement and a 40-hour week:

Both readings in circulation sit above the floor the rule actually sets, and both for the same reason. Letter m)'s closing sentence says it of both at once: «in no case may pay be lower than the minimum interprofessional wage in proportion to effective working time»². A full minimum wage is not the floor of a contract that by law cannot be full time.

And on most agreements the percentage never governs

Both floors carry the same proportion inside them, so it cancels when they are compared. The result is that the agreement pay above which the percentage overtakes the minimum wage is a single figure, the same at any working week: the minimum wage divided by 0.60, which is 2,035 euros a month in year one, and divided by 0.75, which is 1,628, in year two.

Below those the 60 % and the 75 % are decorative: the only thing setting the minimum is the prorated minimum wage. Since most Spanish sectoral agreements pay below 2,035 euros a month in their entry groups, the percentage everyone talks about is usually not the one deciding anything.

The same person, the same job, and twice the money

Paragraph 3 reduces nothing. Its letter i) says that «pay for effective working time shall be that fixed in the collective agreement applicable in the company for these contracts or, failing that, that of the professional group and pay level corresponding to the duties performed»³: one hundred per cent of that figure, not a percentage of it. And paragraph 3 has no working-time cap, so a professional-practice contract can be full time.

The only thing separating the two figures in the third row is whether the person already held the qualification. And there is one more detail in that same letter i): it adds that pay may not fall below «the minimum pay established for the alternating-training contract»³. That reference never comes into play, because 60 % of a figure never exceeds 100 % of the same figure: it is a floor the rule beside it already covers.

What the company pays, and why it is worth knowing

The two modalities do not contribute the same way either, and the contrast is large. Chapter IV of Order PJC/297/2026 is titled «Contributions on alternating-training contracts» and its article 46 fixes, where the base does not exceed the minimum, a single cuota of 69.23 euros of common contingencies, 7.95 of occupational, 4.38 of wage-guarantee fund and 2.44 of vocational training⁵.

Professional practice is not in that chapter. Article 33.1 sends only alternating training to article 46⁶, so a practice contract contributes like any other. Two modalities of the same article of the Statute with opposite contribution regimes.

Two further details are in no summary. The first: both modalities pay an open-ended contract's unemployment rate of 7.05 %, not the 8.30 % a fixed-term pays, because article 33.2.a).1.º names them expressly alongside open-ended contracts⁶. The second: the unemployment base on an alternating contract is neither the contract's own nor its group's minimum, because the first rule of article 46 sends it to the occupational-accident floor, which article 2.2 sets at the minimum wage «increased by one sixth»⁶ and which in 2026 is 1,424.50 euros.

This matters to the worker for one concrete reason: the low cuota is part of what makes the contract attractive to the company, and it is worth knowing its size when negotiating the pay.

A worked example with real numbers

Someone without a qualification starts a first-year alternating-training contract at a company whose agreement pays 1,600 euros a month for a full 40-hour week.

Article 11.2.i) limits their effective work to 26 hours a week, 65 % of the week. On that proportion the agreement floor is 1,600 × 60 % × 65 % = 624 euros and the minimum-wage floor is 1,221 × 65 % = 793.65 euros. The minimum wage governs and the legal minimum is 793.65 euros a month.

The same person, if they already held the job's qualification, could sign a full-time professional-practice contract and their floor would be the agreement's 1,600 euros: more than double.

And the company, on a base of 1,424.40 euros, contributes 161.24 of its own and 36.01 of the worker's on the alternating contract, 197.25 in all, against the 546.97 an ordinary fixed-term contract would cost on the same base with occupational contingencies left out of both sides: 357.67 euros less a month and 4,292.04 less a year.

What happens when the contract is wrong

Letter h) of paragraph 4 is the shortest and the most expensive in the article: «Formative contracts made in fraud of law, or those in respect of which the company breaches its training obligations, shall be understood as having been made as ordinary open-ended contracts»⁴.

There is no penalty to grade and no deadline to negotiate: the contract converts. And because letter g) of the same paragraph counts the formative contract's duration «for the purposes of seniority in the company» and forbids a fresh probation period if the person stays on⁴, the time worked is not lost.

Both modalities also carry the full protective action of Social Security, «including unemployment», and wage-guarantee fund cover⁴.

Before you sign

Three things you can check in an afternoon that change the figure: what your collective agreement sets for the group and level of your duties, which is the first thing both paragraphs refer to; the effective hours written into the contract, because the proportion comes from them; and whether the company has handed over the individual training plan, which letter c) of paragraph 4 requires to be incorporated into the text of the contract⁴.