Martina Serna
LABOUR AND SOCIAL SECURITY DIVISION
The training contract has always been a delicate legal instrument. Its use has often raised doubts about the balance between its inherent training purpose and companies’ organizational needs.
With Royal Decree 1065/2025, which develops Article 11 of the Workers’ Statute, the legislator addresses this issue by strengthening the regulatory framework of the training contract, defining more precisely the situations in which it may be used, and clarifying the consequences of a use that does not conform to its purpose.
The regulation, in force since December 17, 2025, pursues a very specific objective: that the training contract be used only when there is a real need for training and when the work performed in the company is genuinely related to the studies or training of the hired person. It is therefore not a flexible hiring option, but a figure with a clearly defined training purpose.
One of the central aspects of the reform is the requirement of a real and demonstrable training purpose.
The Royal Decree makes it clear that it is not enough for the worker to be enrolled in vocational training, university studies, or courses of the National Employment System. For the contract to be valid, there must be a genuine learning process, and the work carried out in the company must serve to apply in practice the knowledge acquired. For this reason, the training contract cannot be used to perform routine or generic tasks that do not provide learning, even if those tasks are useful for the company.
This requirement directly affects the content of the job position. The assigned duties must have a clear relationship with the training that justifies the contract. The aim is to avoid situations in which a person hired “in training” ends up performing functions that any worker could do without specific qualifications, thus emptying the training contract of its substance.
The Royal Decree maintains the two existing types of training contracts, although it defines their conditions more clearly. The alternating training contract is designed to combine work and study, with a minimum duration of three months and a maximum of two years. During this time, effective work is subject to clear limits: it may not exceed 65% of working time in the first year nor 85% in the second. In addition, as a general rule, overtime, night work, and shift work are not allowed, except in very specific cases linked to the activity itself.
For its part, the contract to obtain professional practice is aimed at those who have already completed their university or vocational studies and need to gain work experience related to their qualification. Its general duration is between six months and one year, although it may be extended up to two years in certain cases, such as for persons with disabilities or borderline intellectual capacity.
With regard to salary, the regulation strengthens the economic guarantees of people hired under training contracts. In the alternating training contract, the salary may not be less than 60% in the first year and 75% in the second year of the wage set in the collective agreement for the position, always respecting the statutory minimum wage in proportion to the time worked. In the contract to obtain professional practice, pay will be that provided for in the collective agreement or, failing that, that corresponding to the professional group, and it may not fall below the legal minimums. In both cases, full Social Security protection is also guaranteed, including unemployment benefits and FOGASA.
Another important new feature is the limitation on the number of training contracts that may exist at the same time in each workplace, depending on the size of the workforce. This measure aims to ensure that trainees receive proper supervision and to prevent companies from concentrating an excessive number of training contracts without real tutoring. In the same vein, the Royal Decree strengthens the role of the tutor, setting limits on the number of people they may supervise and assigning them clear monitoring and evaluation functions.
The individual training program also takes on special importance, as it is recognized as a genuine right of the worker. This program must be drawn up together with public employment services, universities, or accredited training centers, and must clearly explain what will be learned, what tasks will be carried out in the company, and how the training process will be evaluated. In practice, this requires companies to plan and document training in a real and not merely formal way.
The regulation is especially clear about the consequences of non-compliance. If there is no real training purpose or the legal requirements are not respected, the contract will be considered to have been concluded in fraud of law and will automatically be transformed into an open-ended contract from the outset, without prejudice to the sanctions that the Labor Inspectorate may impose.
In short, Royal Decree 1065/2025 reinforces the idea that the training contract is an exceptional instrument, designed exclusively for training. Its correct use requires coherence between training, the tasks performed, and the internal organization of the company. From now on, using this modality without proper planning may entail significant labor and sanctioning risks.
