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WORKING IN SPAIN

Spain’s public and regional holidays in 2023: How to make the most of them

2023 will be a good year for long weekends and bank holidays. Here’s how to plan ahead and turn Spain's national and regional holidays into extended breaks without using up your annual leave.

Published: 5 October 2022 17:13 CEST
SPAIN-PUBLIC-HOLIDAYS-2023
A huge Spanish flag covers the façade of a building in Valdebebas in Madrid. In 2023 pretty much everybody in Spain will have at least 7 'puentes' to enjoy. (Photo by OSCAR DEL POZO / AFP)

People in every region of Spain will enjoy 14 public holidays in 2023, 8 of which are national holidays that can’t be omitted or replaced from the calendar. 

What’s more, 4 of these 8 fall on Monday or Friday, which give you the option of taking a three-day weekend without having to book out any leave from work. 

Two others fall on a Tuesday and a Thursday, which means that by taking one day off from work you can have four days off in a row. 

Spain’s public holidays in 2023 are:

  • Friday April 7th: Good Friday (Viernes Santo)
  • Monday May 1st: May Day (Día del Trabajo)
  • Tuesday August 15th: Assumption of Mary (Asunción de la Virgen)
  • Thursday October 12th: Spain’s National Day (Día Nacional)
  • Wednesday November 1st:  All Saints Day (Día de Todos los Santos)
  • Wednesday December 6th: Constitution Day (Día de la Constitución)
  • Friday December 8th: Immaculate Conception (Inmaculada Concepción)
  • Monday December 25th: Christmas Day (Navidad)

Spain’s official national holidays list is missing two key dates: Three Kings Day (which falls on Friday January 6th and is a holiday in all of Spain’s regions) and New Year’s Day. 

Because January 1st 2023 falls on a Sunday, not all regions are making Monday January 2nd a holiday; so far only Andalusia, Murcia, Aragón, Asturias and Castilla Y León.

Everyone in Spain will also get at least 2 days off for Easter. Apart from Friday April 7th (which is a holiday across Spain), Maundy Thursday 6th will be a holiday in every region except Catalonia and the Valencia region, which instead have Monday April 10th off. In the Balearics, La Rioja, Navarre and the Basque Country it’s a holiday on Thursday, Friday and Monday, which equates to five days off in a row.

It’s worth noting as well that the December 2023 puente (how Spaniards refer to ‘bridging’ the days between official public holidays and the weekend to maximise time off) has two public holidays on a Wednesday and a Friday and can therefore be turned into a five-day holiday by just taking one day of leave.

That means that overall in 2023, pretty much everybody in Spain will have at least 7 puentes to enjoy, and they will only have to take 3 days off in total from their annual leave to enjoy all of them. 

So apart from Spain’s public holidays and the differences in New Years’ and Easter holidays that we’ve covered above, what other regional holidays can residents in Spain look forward to?

Well, each region has at least its own specific holiday to celebrate its region and heritage, many of which fall on Mondays and Fridays, allowing for even more long weekends. 

Keep in mind that there are also festivos (holidays) in specific provinces, cities and towns and even islands, such as in the Canary Islands, where each island enjoys its own day off.

Spain’s regional holidays in 2023 are:

Andalusia: Tuesday February 28th (Andalusia Day)

Aragón: Monday April 24th (Aragón Day)

Asturias: Friday September 8th (Asturias Day)

Balearics: Wednesday March 1st (Balearics Day)

Canary Islands: Tuesday May 30th (Canaries Day)

Cantabria: Friday July 28th (Cantabria Day), Friday September 15th (La Bien Aparecida)

Castilla-La Mancha: Wednesday May 31st (Castilla-La Mancha Day), Thursday June 8th (Corpus Christi)

Castilla y León: Tuesday July 25th (Saint James Day)

Catalonia: Monday September 11th (Catalonia Day), Tuesday December 26h (San Esteban)

Madrid: Monday March 20th (San José Day), Tuesday May 2nd (Madrid Day)

Valencia region: October 9th (Valencia Day)

Extremadura: Tuesday February 21st (Carnival Tuesday), Friday September 8th (Extremadura Day)

Galicia: Wednesday May 17th (Galician Writing Day), Tuesday July 25th (Galicia Day)

La Rioja: Friday June 9th (La Rioja Day) 

Murcia: Friday June 9th (Murcia Day)

Navarre: Tuesday July 25th (Saint James Day)

Basque Country: Tuesday July 25th (Saint James Day)

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PENSIONS

Spain needs 25 million foreign workers to keep its pensions afloat

As the retirement of baby boomers looms, Spain's ageing population and declining birth rate mean the country will need millions of foreign workers to maintain its public pension pot and reinforce the labour market, the Bank of Spain has warned.

Published: 2 May 2024 09:46 CEST
Spain needs 25 million foreign workers to keep its pensions afloat

A recent study by the Bank of Spain estimates that the country will need up to 25 million more immigrant workers by 2053 in order to combat demographic ageing and maintain the ratio of workers to pensioners in order to support the pension system.

Without an influx of more foreign workers or sudden increase in the birth rate in Spain, something that seems very unlikely, experts fear that the growing disparity between working age people and pensioners could put the public pensions system in danger in the medium to long-term.

Like in many countries in the western world, the Spanish population is ageing, with the percentage of the population over 65 years of age predicted to peak in 2050, when almost one in three will be 65 years old or older.

READ ALSO: Spain’s over 65s exceed 20 percent of the population for the first time

By 2035 around one in four (26.0 percent) of Spaniards are expected to be 65 or older. That figure is currently around one fifth of the population.

Furthermore, this is compounded by falling birth rates. Spain’s birth rate hit a record low in 2023, falling to its lowest level since records began, according to INE data. Spain’s fertility rate is the second lowest in the European Union, with Eurostat figures showing there were just 1.19 births per woman in Spain in 2021, compared with 1.13 in Malta and 1.25 in Italy.

If nothing changes, the current ratio of 3.8 people of working age for every pensioner is predicted to plummet to just 2.1 by 2053, according to INE projections.

Maintaining this ratio seems unlikely moving forward, according to the report’s conclusions, something that would put pressure on pensions without significantly increasing social security contributions among working age people.

READ ALSO: Older and more diverse: What Spain’s population will be like in 50 years

The Bank of Spain report noted that “immigrants have high labour participation rates, generally above those of natives – in 2022, 70 percent and 56.5 percent, respectively.”

In three decades’ time, the INE expects Spain to have 14.8 million pensioners, 18 million Spanish nationals of working age and 12 million foreigners. To maintain the ratio, the Bank of Spain forecasts that the working immigrant population would have to rise by more than 25 million to a total of 37 million overall.

Of course, the arrival of 25 million working-age foreigners seems unlikely, if not impossible. To achieve this, around 1 million net migrants would have to enter Spain each year (discounting departures), a figure unprecedented in recent history. To put the figure in context, between 2002 and 2022 net arrivals in Spain reached five million, roughly five times less than what would be necessary to maintain the balance between workers and pensioners.

READ ALSO: ‘Homologación’ – How Spain is ruining the careers of thousands of qualified foreigners

Putting the economics aside, even if such an increase were statistically plausible, such a surge in net migration would be contentious both politically and socially. And it’s not even certain that increased migrant flows would be able to fill the gap in working age people and bolster public pensions: “The capacity of migratory flows to significantly mitigate the process of population ageing is limited,” the Bank of Spain warned in its report. 

What these projections suggest is that Spain’s public pension system will, in coming decades, likely have to be sustained by the contribution of fewer workers overall. This likely means higher social security payments. “Migratory flows have been very dynamic in recent years, but it does not seem likely that they can avoid the process of population ageing… nor completely resolve the imbalances that could arise in the Spanish labour market in the future,” the report stated.

The problem of ageing will also be transferred to the labour market and the types of jobs filled in the future. Increased migratory flows will soften the effect, but the labour characteristics of migrants coming to Spain may not match the job market in the coming decades. The jobs of the future, increasingly digital, will likely require qualifications that many of the migrants expected to arrive in the coming years do not have.

Consequently, the Bank of Spain suggests that “without significant changes in the nature of migratory flows, it does not seem likely that… [they] can completely resolve the mismatches between labour supply and demand that could occur in the coming years in the Spanish labour market.”

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