Spain's minimum wage and average salary in 2026, with sources — and what rent takes on the coast

Spain's minimum wage in 2026 is €1,221 a month before deductions, paid 14 times a year. That is €17,094 a year, or €1,424.50 a month spread over twelve. The average salary is €29,540 a year before deductions, but half of all employees earn less than €24,497.

Below: where each figure comes from, what it leaves out, and how much of it rent takes in 127 places in our base.

The minimum wage in 2026

The minimum wage — SMISMISalario Mínimo Interprofesional — Spain's statutory minimum wage, set by the government each year. Quoted in 14 payments a year.Why it matters. Income thresholds for the digital nomad visa (200 % of SMI) and some other permits are derived from it. When SMI changes, the threshold changes. — is set by the government every year by royal decree. Decree 126/2026, dated 18 February, was published on 19 February. It fixes €40.70 a day or €1,221 a month for any job, whatever the worker's sex or age. It covers 1 January to 31 December 2026, so the rise is paid back to January. The decree in the official gazette.

The trap is the word «monthly». The law gives every employee two extra payments a year: one at Christmas, the other in a month set by the collective agreement. The agreement may also spread them over the twelve months. Hence the decree's annual floor of €17,094, which is 14 times €1,221. Rent is paid twelve times a year, and over twelve payments the same minimum is €1,424.50 a month. Article 31 of the Workers' Statute.

• Per day: €40.70.
• Per month, on 14 payments: €1,221.
• Per year, at least: €17,094.
• Per month, with the year spread over twelve: €1,424.50.
• Temporary and seasonal work up to 120 days: at least €57.82 per working day.
• Domestic work: €9.55 per hour.

Only money counts towards the minimum: pay in kind cannot reduce it. Shorter hours are paid pro rata. In 2025 the minimum was €1,184 a month and €16,576 a year, so it rose by 3.1% in a year. The 2025 decree.

The average salary: mean and median

Spain's statistics institute, INEINESpain's National Statistics Institute. It keeps the padrón — the official register of residents of every municipality.Why it matters. The only primary source of population for the whole country. A figure 'per INE' can be checked against a table; a figure 'from the internet' cannot., measures pay in its Annual Wage Structure Survey. The data for 2024 came out on 28 May 2026. The mean salary is €29,540.26 a year per worker. The median is €24,497.17. INE's release.

The gap between them is not an error but the shape of the data. A few large salaries pull the mean up. The median is the worker exactly in the middle: half earn less, half earn more. It is the figure that answers «what does an ordinary person earn».

• Bottom tenth: up to €12,018 a year.
• Bottom quarter: up to €17,457.
• Median: €24,497, or €2,041 a month divided by twelve.
• Mean: €29,540, or €2,462 a month.
• Top quarter: from €36,970.
• Top tenth: from €52,515.
• The mean for women is €26,905, for men €32,058.

All figures are before tax and social security. The survey covers employees registered for at least two months of the year, one of them October. Part-time staff are included; farming is not. That is how the bottom tenth can sit below a full-year minimum: the survey takes in people who worked only part of the year or part of the day. The INE table.

To compare within one year: in 2024 the full-year minimum was €15,876, which is 65% of that year's median. By sector, INE puts hotels and restaurants at the bottom, with a mean of €17,653 a year. The 2024 decree.

Along the coast, region by region

INE publishes the same figures by region. The places in our base sit in 10 regions. The gap between the top and bottom median is €11,280 a year, wider than the gap between the national mean and median.

Gross per worker per year, 2024. Source: INE, table 28191.

Highest median: Basque Country, €31,912. Lowest: Canary Islands, €20,632. In one region the bottom quarter is no higher than the full-year minimum for 2024 (€15,876): Andalusia at €15,876. There one worker in four earned no more than the legal floor over the year.

How much of the wage rent takes

For rent we use what tenants actually pay, not adverts: the median of live leases in 2024 from SERPAVISERPAVIThe Ministry of Housing's public registry of rents: medians of actual signed leases by municipality.Why it matters. Asking rent and signed rent are different things: an advert is today's price, while the registry also holds old leases whose rent has not moved in years. The registry shows what people actually pay., the state rent register. It is built from tax returns and covers homes of every size. The median rented home in our places measures from 47 to 101 m², depending on the place. The ministry's register.

The rent is then divided by the minimum wage spread over twelve months, and by the region's median salary for 2024, also over twelve. Both wages are before deductions. The last columns are our estimate of the asking rent for a one-bedroom flat, and they are an estimate, not a measurement.

Median across the coast's places. The minimum is €1,424.50 a month (2026); the regional median is for 2024; rent is for 2024.

• Lowest share: Costa da Morte, where tenants pay €310 under their leases, 22% of the minimum.
• Highest share: Costa Barcelona, at €900, or 63% of the minimum.
• Against the national mean salary spread over twelve months (€2,462), lease rents take from 13% (Costa da Morte) to 37% (Costa Barcelona). Our one-bedroom estimates take from 15% to 57%.
• Of 127 places with a register figure, 16 have a median lease above half the minimum wage.
• The cheapest place by lease is Camariñas at €225. The dearest is San Sebastián / Donostia at €967, which is 68% of the minimum.
• On our asking estimate a one-bedroom costs more than the whole minimum wage in 2 places: Marbella at €1,500, Formentera at €1,500.

The largest cities in our base

The eight most populous places in our base. Net income here is per resident; more on it below.

What people keep: INE's net income per resident

INEINESpain's National Statistics Institute. It keeps the padrón — the official register of residents of every municipality.Why it matters. The only primary source of population for the whole country. A figure 'per INE' can be checked against a table; a figure 'from the internet' cannot. does publish a net figure, but not per worker. Its Household Income Distribution Atlas takes all income after income tax and social contributions: wages, pensions, benefits and the rest. It then divides that by every resident, children included. It is built from income tax returns. For Spain as a whole in 2023 it comes to €15,036 per person. INE's release, methodology.

We have this figure for 127 municipalities, for 2023. 39 of them are above the national figure. The median across our base is €13,605.

• Highest: Getxo at €24,626, San Sebastián / Donostia at €22,330, Sitges at €21,387.
• Lowest: Torrevieja at €9,868, Adra at €10,156, Sanlúcar de Barrameda at €10,203.
• By coast, the median runs from €11,152 (Costa Cálida) to €21,544 (Basque Coast).

This is not a salary. A town of retirees and a town of young families with the same adult incomes give different figures: in the second the same income is also divided among the children. It cannot be set directly against the minimum wage or the median — only places against each other.

The visa threshold, as a number

The minimum wage also sets the income bar for the permit for remote work for a foreign employer — the digital nomad route. UGEUGEUnidad de Grandes Empresas y Colectivos Estratégicos — the Ministry of Inclusion unit that handles applications under the Startup Act: digital nomads, investors, highly qualified professionals.Why it matters. UGE has its own deadline (20 working days, silence counts as approval) and its own document rules; it is a different procedure from the provincial extranjería., a unit of the Ministry of Inclusion, puts it at 200% of the SMISMISalario Mínimo Interprofesional — Spain's statutory minimum wage, set by the government each year. Quoted in 14 payments a year.Why it matters. Income thresholds for the digital nomad visa (200 % of SMI) and some other permits are derived from it. When SMI changes, the threshold changes. per month for the applicant, 75% for a second family member and 25% for each further one. The sums are gross. When the decree changes, the bar moves with it. The UGE document.

What this article does not calculate

Take-home pay. Tax and contributions depend on the region, the household and the type of contract, and that is a calculation, not a reference figure. The only net figure in this article comes from INE, and it is per resident, not per worker.

Nor next year's minimum. The 2026 decree runs until 31 December; a new figure needs a new decree.

Further

Lease rents for every place, as a file, are in our rent-paid dataset. Income per resident by municipality is in the empty-homes dataset. A full monthly budget, place by place, is in the cost-of-living guide. The coasts at either end: Costa da Morte and Costa Barcelona.

Terms: SMISMISalario Mínimo Interprofesional — Spain's statutory minimum wage, set by the government each year. Quoted in 14 payments a year.Why it matters. Income thresholds for the digital nomad visa (200 % of SMI) and some other permits are derived from it. When SMI changes, the threshold changes., SERPAVISERPAVIThe Ministry of Housing's public registry of rents: medians of actual signed leases by municipality.Why it matters. Asking rent and signed rent are different things: an advert is today's price, while the registry also holds old leases whose rent has not moved in years. The registry shows what people actually pay., INEINESpain's National Statistics Institute. It keeps the padrón — the official register of residents of every municipality.Why it matters. The only primary source of population for the whole country. A figure 'per INE' can be checked against a table; a figure 'from the internet' cannot.

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