Convenio de prácticas — the tripartite agreement that makes your Spanish internship legal.

A compliant convenio is a 6–10 page document written in Spanish (or bilingual Spanish/English for international programmes) and structured in clauses (cláusulas). Every field on the template must be filled — Spanish universities and consulates reject convenios with blanks, dashes or 'TBC' placeholders.

The signature order matters because each party's signature depends on the previous one being present. Getting the sequence wrong is the single most common reason we see convenios rejected by consulates or delayed at the university's international office.

Assuming you already have a confirmed internship offer and your university has agreed in principle, a realistic timeline from template request to signed convenio in hand is 3 weeks. The number one delay factor is your home university's summer closure — many international offices close from mid-July to mid-August with no signatures processed.

Since 1 January 2024, Real Decreto-ley 2/2023 obliges every host company in Spain to register every intern — paid or unpaid — with the Seguridad Social from the first day of the placement. The company covers the contribution (approximately €60/month per unpaid intern; higher for paid interns based on the stipend). For you as the intern, this means: (a) you generate contribution days that count towards Spanish pension and unemployment history, (b) you're covered for occupational accidents and healthcare in Spain from day one, and (c) the paperwork is entirely on the company's side — you don't need to do anything.

In practice this has caused some smaller Spanish companies to reduce unpaid intern hosting because they can no longer take an intern at zero marginal cost. The upshot is a marginal increase in paid stipends across our network (median stipend rose from €500 to €650 between 2023 and 2025) and the effective disappearance of the €0 unpaid internship in most sectors.