Law Over Borders Comparative Guide: Foreign Direct Investment Law Guide

The regime is broad and largely based on one article in Act 19/2003, of 4 July, on the legal regime governing capital movements and economic transactions with foreign countries and on certain measures to prevent money laundering (“Spanish FDI Act”). It covers acquisitions of: minority shareholdings of 10%; Spanish companies and assets with activities in “sectors”; and acquisitions by certain investors, independently of the activities of the target. In 2023, Royal Decree 571/2023 of 4 July on foreign investments (“Implementing Regulation”) entered into force bringing some helpful clarifications as to how to apply the broad regime in practice.

In line with the statistics published by the authority, since the introduction of the system in 2020 until 2025, the Spanish FDI authority has received 674 formal authorisation requests of which only two were prohibited (approximately 0.3%).

You can read the full article here.