Updated
On 30 September the gazette carried a decree that rewrote parts of income tax, VAT, the local capital gains tax and the SOCIMI regime. On 2 October Congress refused to convalidate it and the whole thing was struck out. A second decree from the same batch survived, is in force, and has not been voted on yet.
Real Decreto-ley 26/2026 of 29 September was published on 30 September and entered into force immediately. On 2 October the Congress of Deputies, acting under article 86.2 of the Constitution, agreed to derogate it, and the resolution appeared in the gazette the same day. A companion decree, 27/2026, was rejected in the same session. The derogation leaves nothing standing: the amendments to personal income tax on rental income, the ten per cent deduction for tenants with a taxable base below 33,007.20 euro, the exemption on selling a dwelling to a public housing body, the changes to the VAT law due to take effect on 1 December, the amendment to the local plusvalia and the SOCIMI amendment that carried effect from 1 January 2026 are all deprived of effect.
Real Decreto-ley 25/2026 of 29 September, published on 30 September, continues the hydrocarbon duty reductions first made by RDL 7/2026 and kept by RDL 18/2026. The cut against the pre-RDL 7/2026 rates is 20 cents per litre in October, 13 cents in November and 6 cents in December for diesel used as fuel and unleaded petrol. The November and December figures are conditional: if the September consumer price index for petrol or diesel exceeds the same month a year earlier by more than 15 per cent, November goes back to 20 cents and December to 13; if the October index breaches the same threshold, December goes to 20. A parallel safeguard can restore the reduced VAT rate of 10 per cent on electricity and gas for November and December if those indices deteriorate. It was not applied in September because prices behaved.
The same decree carries a final provision amending Ley 10/2010 on the prevention of money laundering, to bring crypto-asset service providers within the national framework. The stated reasons are explicit and worth reading: successive EU sanctions packages against Russia have focused on crypto as a route around them, Spain is subject to infringement procedure INFR(2025)2079 for failing to align its national framework with Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 on information accompanying transfers of funds and certain crypto-assets, the procedure is at reasoned opinion stage, and the FATF evaluation of Spain began this year.
The same decree raises the annual approval ceiling of the Fund for Foreign Investment, FIEX, from 350 million euro to 500 million. The ceiling had been unchanged since 2021 and had become a binding constraint: COFIDES approved 344 million in 2025 against the 350 million limit, and has identified around 460 million of candidate operations for 2026. Separately, the Fund for the Internationalisation of the Enterprise, FIEM, may now accept Spanish guarantees in its reimbursable financing, which it previously could not. The explanatory memorandum says the change is aimed specifically at Spanish small and medium enterprises beginning to invest abroad.
The public comment window on the draft amendment to Organic Law 4/2000 and the draft Asylum Law ran from 23 September to 6 October 2026 and has now closed. Nothing in the law in force has changed. The texts move to the next stage of their passage, where the opportunity to influence them is parliamentary rather than administrative.
Directive (EU) 2024/2853 must be transposed by 9 December 2026 and applies to products placed on the market after that date, with Directive 85/374/EEC repealed from the same day but continuing to govern products placed on the market before it. Spain has not yet published the transposing instrument. That does not move the date.