December 2025
Gemma Fabregat, Of Counsel at Sagardoy, examines six recently approved provisions introducing significant changes in employment law.
Royal Decree-Law 12/2025, of 28 October (DANA).
Royal Decree-Law 12/2025, of 28 October, establishes urgent measures for reactivation, reinforcement, and prevention under the framework of the Immediate Response, Reconstruction and Recovery Plan in response to the damage caused by the Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos (DANA) in various municipalities between 28 October and 4 November 2024.
This Royal Decree-Law updates and unifies the employment and social security measures linked to the 2024 DANA. Its purpose is straightforward: to maintain employment, support self-employed workers, and provide liquidity to businesses while economic activity recovers. In doing so, the Government concludes the emergency phase and establishes a common framework of labour and productive support in the affected municipalities.
Calendar of non-working days for the calculation of deadlines.
Resolution of 18 November 2025, of the State Secretariat for Public Function, establishing, for the purposes of calculating deadlines, the calendar of non-working days within the General State Administration for 2026.
The Resolution of the State Secretariat for Public Function, dated 18 November 2025, approves, as it does every year, the calendar of non-working days for administrative deadlines in the General State Administration for 2026. This is based on Article 30 of Law 39/2015, which requires the Administration to publish this calendar before the beginning of the year, always in accordance with the official labour calendar. This labour reference had already been set by the Directorate-General of Labour in October, and it is now extended by Public Function to the calculation of deadlines.
Economic and social recovery of the island of La Palma following volcanic eruptions.
Royal Decree-Law 13/2025, of 25 November, adopting urgent complementary measures for the economic and social recovery of the island of La Palma following the damage caused by volcanic eruptions.
Royal Decree-Law 13/2025 continues the package of labour and social protection measures that has been applied in La Palma since the 2021 eruption. The underlying idea is simple: four years later, there are still farms and entire areas where work is impossible due to residual gases or heat from lava flows, and there remain groups unable to resume normal economic activity. This legislation therefore maintains and extends labour mechanisms and financial relief measures that proved effective in previous years.
Royal Decree 1065/2025, of 26 November, developing the training contract regime.
Royal Decree 1065/2025, of 26 November, develops the regime of the training contract under Article 11 of the consolidated text of the Workers’ Statute, approved by Royal Legislative Decree 2/2015, of 23 October.
Royal Decree 1065/2025 provides the regulatory framework for training contracts, definitively replacing all prior legislation. Its objective is to provide legal certainty, coherence, and a single framework for both alternating training contracts and contracts for the acquisition of professional practice, thereby closing the stage of fragmented regulation and systematically linking employment contracts with the new Vocational Education and Training (VET) and university systems for the first time.
Remuneration in the public sector.
Royal Decree-Law 14/2025, of 2 December, introducing urgent measures regarding public sector remuneration.
The Government approved RDL 14/2025 to implement, without waiting for a new Budget Law, the agreed salary increases in the public sector with UGT and CSIF for 2025 and 2026. The budgetary extension required an immediate solution, and this measure allows the agreed increases to be applied across the entire public sector, including public companies and the institutional public sector.
Law 9/2025, of 3 December, on sustainable mobility.
Law 9/2025, on Sustainable Mobility, establishes for the first time a labour law framework to regulate how commuting should be planned in terms of sustainability, road safety, and emissions reduction. It is not a transport law, but a transversal regulation directly affecting labour organisation: it requires companies to prepare sustainable mobility plans for commuting, activates collective bargaining, and makes mobility a new structural area of social dialogue.
