Spanish voluntary leave: what you keep and lose

The short answer

Spanish voluntary leave of absence is the right to suspend your employment contract for four months to five years, provided you have been with the employer for at least one year¹. During that time you do not work, you are not paid, and the contract does not end: it is suspended.

What separates it from the other leaves is what it does not give back. It does not contribute, your job is not held and you build no seniority. When it ends you keep, in the words of article 46.5, «only a preferential right to reinstatement in vacancies of the same or a similar grade existing or arising in the company»¹.

Five leaves under one name

Article 46 of the Spanish Workers' Statute regulates five different situations, and moving from one to another changes the right, the job reserve and the contribution all at once¹:

The first two rows are the ones people confuse, and they are the ones that differ most. The third column already hints at it: voluntary leave is the only one that requires a year with the employer, and it is also the only one that returns nothing.

The four things voluntary leave does not give

Each comes from a different clause of the same article, which is why they are all lost together without anyone warning you.

It does not contribute. The article that turns a leave into effective contribution is 237 of the Social Security Act, and it refers to article 46.3 of the Statute and to nothing else². Article 46.3 covers the care leaves. The word «voluntary» does not appear in article 237 once, and article 46.2 is not cited in it either.

It does not hold your job. Article 46.5 does not say you keep the job: it says you keep «only a preferential right to reinstatement in vacancies»¹. The difference is practical and it is large. A reserve obliges the employer to keep your job waiting; a preference puts you first in the queue when a vacancy of the same or a similar grade appears. If none appears, there is nothing to return to.

It builds no seniority. Paragraph 1 expressly grants compulsory leave «the preservation of the job and the counting of seniority for its duration», and paragraph 3 says the care-leave period «shall be counted towards seniority»¹. Paragraph 2 says neither. If the seniority sentence in paragraph 3 reached the whole article, the express grant in paragraph 1 would be redundant, and the «only» in paragraph 5 points the same way. Your collective agreement may improve it, and that is worth checking before you apply.

It has no statutory reinstatement deadline. Article 46 sets one, and only one: for the compulsory leave, which must be requested «within the month following the end of the public office»¹. For voluntary leave the article is silent, so the collective agreement sets it, and it almost always requires written notice before the period ends. Failing to give that notice is one of the most expensive ways to lose a leave that was properly granted.

The two conditions only voluntary leave carries

The first is one year of service with the employer. The second is easier to compute wrongly: the right «may only be exercised again by the same worker if four years have passed since the end of the previous voluntary leave»¹.

The count starts at the end of that leave, not at its start and not on the day you went back to work. Those three dates can differ, and picking the wrong one makes you late for a request you believed was in time.

None of the other four leaves requires any service at all. Article 46.3 grants the right «to workers» with no condition about time with the employer, so someone three months into a job can take child-care leave and cannot take voluntary leave.

Care leave, which is the other object

Up to three years for each child, counted from the date of birth or, where relevant, from the court or administrative decision, and up to two years to care for a spouse, a registered partner or a relative up to the second degree who cannot look after themselves¹. That second period is the only one a collective agreement may extend, because the article says so in that paragraph and not in the previous one.

The reserve steps down on a specific date: during the first year it is a reserve of your own job and, «once that period has passed, the reserve shall be of a job in the same professional group or an equivalent grade»¹. Which is not the same thing, but is also not nothing: it is your job or an equivalent one, never none at all.

That step moves if you belong to a legally recognised large family: fifteen months in the general category and eighteen in the special one. The article adds one more sentence, inside that same paragraph, for when the person takes the right «for the same length and on the same terms as the other parent», and the reserve then reaches eighteen months too. It is worth knowing that the sentence is written inside the large-family paragraph: read as a free-standing sentence it would give eighteen months to any family, and its position in the text does not support that reading. The calculator applies the interpretation that does not overstate your right, and says so.

And a rule that surprises anyone who has a second child during a first leave: «where a new qualifying person gives rise to a new period of leave, the start of that leave shall end the one being taken»¹. They do not stack or add up. The new one replaces the earlier one.

What changed in 2023, and why your guide may be out of date

Two reforms that year moved the most-quoted figures, three months apart.

Royal decree-law 2/2023, in force from 18 March 2023, rewrote article 237.2 of the Social Security Act: where it said «the first year» of the leave period to care for other relatives, it now says «the first three years»⁴. It tripled the credit in one step, so any guide older than that date still prints one year.

Royal decree-law 5/2023, in force from 30 June 2023, widened article 46.3 to name expressly the «spouse or registered partner» and the «partner's own blood relative», where it previously said only «a relative up to the second degree of blood or affinity»⁵. The same reform obliged an employer limiting two workers' simultaneous leave to give reasons «in writing» and to «offer an alternative plan that secures the enjoyment of both workers»⁵.

Out of that comes an asymmetry between two statutes that hardly anyone states. The Statute guarantees two years of leave to care for a relative and Social Security credits three. The third credited year exists only if your collective agreement extends the leave: the Social Security Act is willing to pay for a year the Statute does not oblige anyone to grant. Until March 2023 the asymmetry ran exactly the other way, two years of right and one credited.

And the two lists of relatives no longer match. Article 46.3 has named the spouse and the registered partner since June 2023; article 237.2 was last amended three months earlier and still says «other relatives, up to the second degree of blood or affinity»². Whether the consequence is a loss of the contribution credit is an open question, and it is worth asking before you count on it.

Unemployment is on neither list

During the leave there is no benefit. Article 267 of the Social Security Act lists the legal situations of unemployment, and a leave of absence is none of them: the contract has neither ended nor been suspended for one of the causes on that list, it is alive and merely suspended³.

Afterwards it adds nothing either. The months that do contribute during a care leave are treated as contributed, literally, «for the purposes of the corresponding Social Security benefits for retirement, permanent incapacity, death and survivors, maternity and paternity»². Unemployment does not appear in that list. Three years that count in full towards your pension and zero days towards your unemployment benefit.

A worked example with real dates

A worker asks for twenty-four months of leave to care for her child, starting on 15 March 2026, in a family that is not a legally recognised large family.

She needs no service. Her own job is held until 15 March 2027 and, from that day, the reserve becomes a job in her same professional group. The leave ends on 15 March 2028⁶. All twenty-four months count as contributed, because they fit inside the three-year cap, and they count towards her retirement pension, a permanent incapacity, death and survivors, and maternity and paternity. They add not one day to her unemployment entitlement.

Had she taken voluntary leave of the same length instead: zero months contributed, zero days with her job held, zero seniority accumulated and, on her return, a priority over whatever vacancies there were. Same time away, same pay foregone, opposite result.

What this page does not settle

The regime for public servants is a different statute and is out of scope. Your collective agreement may improve any of these periods, and article 46.6 also allows further types of leave to be agreed «on the terms and with the effects provided there»¹. And if the employer tells you there is no vacancy when you ask to come back, what happens next is a matter for the social courts rather than a formula: that calls for an employment lawyer, not a calculator.