Disciplinary dismissal in Spain: grounds and procedure
Employment law in Spain: English guides
A disciplinary dismissal (despido disciplinario) is termination for an alleged serious and culpable breach of employment duties. It is the most severe employment sanction. An accusation does not establish that the alleged conduct happened or that dismissal is proportionate.
What grounds can the employer rely on?
Article 54 of the Workers’ Statute identifies repeated unjustified absence or lateness; workplace disobedience; serious verbal or physical offences; breach of contractual good faith or abuse of trust; a continuous and voluntary reduction in normal or agreed performance; habitual intoxication or drug addiction adversely affecting work; and specified forms of discriminatory or sexual harassment.
The collective agreement can classify misconduct and regulate sanctions and procedure. The circumstances, evidence, seriousness, culpability and proportionality must be assessed. An internal policy cannot remove statutory rights or turn every minor breach into a lawful dismissal.
Poor performance is not automatically misconduct
A fall in output may have causes other than a deliberate reduction in effort. Workload, training, resources, targets, health-related circumstances and comparable performance may be relevant. The statutory disciplinary ground requires a continuous and voluntary reduction in normal or agreed performance. Capability or difficulty adapting to technical changes is a different issue, with different safeguards under the objective-dismissal rules.
The employee must normally be heard first
The Supreme Court’s judgment 1250/2024 of 18 November 2024 established the general requirement to give an employee an opportunity to respond to allegations before deciding on disciplinary dismissal, applying Article 7 of ILO Convention 158. The Convention allows an exception where the employer cannot reasonably be expected to provide that opportunity; it is not a general permission to omit it.
Whether the opportunity was real, the allegations sufficiently identified and the time and circumstances adequate must be examined. Do not assume that a post-dismissal meeting replaces the prior hearing. Employee representatives, known union members and collective agreements may engage additional procedural guarantees. Historical dismissals require consideration of the case law applicable to their dates.
The dismissal letter and evidence
The written notification must state the facts relied upon and the effective date. Vague labels such as “loss of trust” need to be assessed against the actual explanation. The employer must establish the alleged misconduct; the employee should preserve messages, schedules, instructions, performance records and witnesses that rebut or explain it.
Time limits for imposing sanctions also matter. Article 60 contains short periods linked to when the employer learned of the misconduct and an overall period from its commission; classification and exceptions for particular conduct require individual assessment. Those employer time limits are different from the employee’s deadline to challenge dismissal.
Is notice or severance payable?
A justified disciplinary dismissal does not generate statutory dismissal compensation or the ordinary fifteen-day notice entitlement applicable to objective dismissal. However, earned salary, accrued extra payments and unused holiday may still form part of the final settlement.
If the dismissal is unfair, reinstatement or compensation applies under the relevant option rules. If it is void because of a fundamental-rights violation or a statutory protected situation, reinstatement and back pay are normally required. A procedural defect should not automatically be described as nullity without examining its legal effect.
Challenging the decision
A dismissal challenge normally has a strict 20-working-day deadline, counted from the day after the effective termination date, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and applicable public holidays. Do not assume that August stops this deadline. Filing the required conciliation request suspends the countdown: it resumes on the day after conciliation is attempted or after fifteen working days without it taking place, with the time remaining, not a fresh twenty days. Private negotiations, a complaint to HR or an inspection complaint do not by themselves preserve the dismissal deadline.
Use our immediate dismissal checklist and bring the letter, prior-hearing communication, your response, the contract and the agreement. Our Spanish disciplinary-dismissal guide (in Spanish) is related reading.
Legal sources
Workers’ Statute, Articles 54, 55 and 60 (Spanish legislation). The prior-hearing rule is addressed in the BOE legal review of the Supreme Court case law (in Spanish).
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