CATALONIA'S HOSPITALITY AGREEMENT AND OVERTIME: WHAT CHANGED WITH THE 2025-2028 AGREEMENT AND HOW IT AFFECTS YOUR SHIFTS

First things first: there's no single "hospitality agreement"

When people mention "the hospitality collective agreement," they usually picture one single text applying the same way across Spain. It doesn't exist. The State Labor Agreement for Hospitality (ALEH, now in its sixth edition) sets shared minimums — maximum working hours, rest periods, a few general guarantees — but the terms that actually matter day to day (pay scales, annual working hours, severance, leave) are negotiated agreement by agreement, almost always at the provincial level. If your restaurant is in Barcelona, Girona, or Tarragona, the one that applies to you is the Catalonia Hospitality and Tourism Collective Agreement 2025-2028, in effect from January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2028.

What changes under the 2025-2028 agreement

The points with the most day-to-day impact on running a restaurant:

• Pay: cumulative annual increase of 4% in 2025, 2026, and 2027, and 3% in 2028.
• Vacation: increases from 30 to 31 calendar days per year.
• Maximum annual working hours: reduced from 1,791 to 1,783 hours starting in 2026.
• Severance for temporary contracts: increases from 12 to 14 days per year worked.
• New paid leave: up to 4 days a year for family emergencies, 3 to 5 days for hospitalization of a family member, and 8 paid annual hours for medical appointments.
• First-ever regulation of the right to digital disconnection outside working hours.

Overtime: what the law says (and what can slip through)

The overtime cap isn't set by the collective agreement but by Article 35.2 of the Workers' Statute: a maximum of 80 overtime hours per year, except in cases of force majeure. Within that limit, overtime is voluntary — staff can decline it outside of an actual emergency. It must be compensated with a minimum 75% surcharge over the ordinary hourly rate, or with equivalent time off if agreed with staff — some provincial agreements, like Madrid's, go as high as 100%.

A quick example: if your ordinary hourly rate is €12, the overtime hour can't be paid below €21. Without a reliable time-tracking system — mandatory since 2019, though in practice many restaurants still run it on loose sheets or from memory — it's easy to lose count and end up either breaching the legal cap or underpaying, with the sanction risk that carries if a labor inspection happens.

How this affects how you organize shifts

The cut in annual working hours (from 1,791 to 1,783) isn't a minor detail: if you staffed a service based on last year's hours, you now need to redo that math. And with overtime getting more expensive (a minimum 75% surcharge, on a base salary that's also rising 4%), leaning on it systematically to cover shift gaps stops being cheap. It's worth revisiting your labor cost with these updated numbers before it catches you off guard on the next payroll run.

What to do now

• Update your team's pay scales by category and level.
• Review and update any contracts that still reflect outdated hours or vacation terms.
• Check that your time-tracking system is reliable — not paper, not memory — so you don't lose control of overtime or your labor cost.
• If you have high turnover, the higher severance for temporary contracts (12 to 14 days) affects you directly too — review your staff turnover numbers to see whether it's worth bringing it down.
• Talk to your payroll advisor to apply the changes correctly before the quarter closes.

This article is general guidance on the 2025-2028 agreement's changes and doesn't replace advice from your payroll or labor advisor, who should confirm how each point applies to your specific situation.

Want to review how this affects your labor cost and shift planning?

At Gestionomie we help restaurants in Barcelona, Girona, and the Maresme translate these regulatory changes into concrete numbers for their business: real cost per shift, how much room you have before relying on overtime, and staffing plans adjusted to the 2026 working-hour limit. Get in touch for a no-commitment first conversation.