Mining Investigation Permits and Exploitation Concessions in Spain: Sections A to D, Deadlines, Fees, Restoration and Strategic Projects (Rare Earths, Lithium, Tungsten)

Ley 22/1973, de Minas (the Spanish Mining Act) divides all mineral resources into 4 sections. Section A covers resources of low economic value and geographically restricted marketing, as well as those that are merely extracted, crushed and sized for construction works (such as aggregates). Section B covers mineral and thermal waters, underground structures and deposits formed by previous mining operations, such as spoil heaps and tailings ponds. Section C is the residual clause: everything not included in the other sections. Section D covers coal, radioactive minerals, geothermal resources, bituminous rocks and anything the Government declares to be of energy interest.

The Act does not name rare earths, lithium or tungsten. In a natural deposit that is neither radioactive nor of energy interest, they fall under Section C, which is the section covered by this guide. This is an interpretation of the residual clause: no official text classifies a specific deposit in advance, and the mining authority determines the section during the application process.

There are 2 nuances worth bearing in mind. Radioactive minerals are governed by the Mining Act only in matters not regulated by the Ley de Energía Nuclear (the Spanish Nuclear Energy Act), meaning that a deposit with associated radioactive minerals requires analysing its legal fit before applying for anything. Furthermore, liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons fall outside the scope of the Mining Act.

All naturally occurring deposits are public domain property. Owning the land does not give you the right to exploit the minerals beneath it: that right is granted by the Spanish Administration through a permit or a concession.

As of 15 October 2026, there is no new Mining Act. The consolidated text of Ley 22/1973 in the BOE (Spain's Official State Gazette) has remained unchanged since 2014. The I Plan de Acción para la Gestión Sostenible de las Materias Primas Minerales 2026-2030 (1st Action Plan for the Sustainable Management of Mineral Raw Materials 2026-2030), approved on 10 March 2026, provides for amending it to integrate the European Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), but today the longstanding law still applies.

There are 3 tiers, and each has its own size, duration and surface fee. The exploration permit allows studies and reconnaissance that do not substantially alter the land over a large area: from 300 to 3,000 mining grids. It lasts 1 year, extendable by at most 1 more year, and where there are multiple applicants, the order of submission prevails.

Its value lies in priority: the holder can subsequently apply for investigation permits or direct concessions over the land within their perimeter that was free and registerable when the exploration application was submitted. This priority right must be exercised within the timeframe set by the Regulations, which the Act stipulates cannot be less than 1 month after the permit expires.

The investigation permit authorises works to uncover and define the resource (such as drilling or galleries) and grants the right, once defined, to be awarded the concession. It covers from 1 to 300 mining grids and lasts a maximum of 3 years.

The exploitation concession is the right to extract and use the resource. It covers from 1 to 100 mining grids, lasts 30 years and grants rights to all Section C resources within its perimeter, except those reserved by the State. Only 1 Section C concession can exist over the same piece of land.

The unit of measurement for all 3 is the mining grid (cuadrícula minera), measuring 20 sexagesimal seconds per side. Concessions are always granted in whole grids.

In practice, the application is processed before the mining authority of the autonomous community where the land is located. In the Community of Madrid, for example, this is the Dirección General de Promoción Económica e Industrial (Directorate-General for Economic and Industrial Promotion), which accepts online or in-person submissions and requires a power of attorney proving representation. If the resource spans land in 2 or more autonomous communities or on the continental shelf, the decision rests with the Central State Administration through the Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica, MITECO (Ministry for the Ecological Transition).

The land must be free and registerable (franco y registrable), meaning it is not already covered by another mining right that prevents it. The application designates the grids and is accompanied by the investigation project, including the work programme, the investment budget and the economic study of its financing. The Reglamento General para el Régimen de la Minería, Real Decreto 2857/1978 (General Regulations for the Mining Regime) grants 60 days from the submission of the application to complete the documentation, and requires the project to be signed by a mining engineer or technical mining engineer. Processing expenses are borne by the applicant.

The application must also include the restoration plan for the affected area, which is not a subsequent step: without an authorised plan, the permit is not granted (as explained below). Furthermore, if the Administration considers the financing unviable, it may require a bond of 10% of the planned investment for the 1st year.

Once the application is definitively admitted, a public consultation period is opened in the BOE and in the official provincial gazette. From publication in the BOE, there are 15 days to file objections, after which no objections are admitted.

The permit is granted for the requested period, up to a maximum of 3 years. It may be extended for 3 more years and, exceptionally, for successive periods, assessing the holder's solvency, the work carried out, the investments made and the results.

Processing fees (tasa, official fee) are currently set by the autonomous communities. The 1978 Regulations still express them in pesetas, and each region has its own fees law: in Madrid it is tariff item 356, with no published amount on the online portal's information sheet. Managora submits the application using your power of attorney, organises the file, responds to official requests and monitors deadlines; the technical project and the restoration plan are signed by a competent technician, as required by law.

There are 2 routes to obtaining a concession. A derived concession is requested when the investigation sufficiently proves the resource, and always within the validity period of the investigation permit: if you let the permit expire, you lose the right. It is requested with an exploitation project (work programme, investment budget and financing study), and the Administration verifies the existence of the resource on site.

A direct concession is requested without a prior investigation permit in 2 cases: when the resource is already evident and its exploitation is deemed viable, or when there is sufficient data on resources from expired mining rights which, due to technological improvements or new market prospects, allow their exploitation to be defined. A technical report must be added justifying why the direct route is appropriate.

Both files undergo public consultation and are resolved following a report from the Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (Geological and Mining Institute of Spain). If denied because the resource is not sufficiently proven, the applicant has 60 days to apply for an investigation permit over that land.

A Section C concession lasts 30 years and may be extended for equal periods up to a maximum of 90. Each extension requires demonstrating in the file the continuity of the resource or the discovery of a new one, and that extraction techniques have been adapted to technological progress. If a different resource of interest appears, it must be reported immediately.

In addition to the processing tasa, each right pays an annual surface fee (canon de superficie) per grid to the State: €1.2 in the exploration permit, €22.5 in the investigation permit and €45 in the exploitation concession granted under Ley 22/1973. The investigation and concession fees accrue on 1 January each year for rights existing on that date, whether work is carried out or not; the exploration fee accrues on the day the right is born.

Breaching the Mining Act is expensive: fines of up to €30,000 for minor infringements, up to €300,000 for serious infringements and up to €1,000,000 for very serious infringements.

It depends on the project. An ordinary environmental impact assessment (Annex I of Ley 21/2013, the Spanish Environmental Assessment Act) is required for open-cast mines affecting more than 25 hectares or moving more than 200,000 cubic metres of earth per year, those exploiting substances that may generate acidity or toxicity, such as sulphides or radioactive minerals, and certain underground mines. A simplified assessment (Annex II) applies to investigation projects with a pilot face, galleries or mining waste facilities, and exploitations not listed in Annex I.

In the ordinary procedure, public consultation lasts at least 30 working days and the environmental impact statement is issued within 4 months. The report for the simplified procedure is issued within 3.

The restoration plan is submitted alongside the permit or concession application. It includes the mining waste management plan and the location of its facilities, the proposed financial guarantee and, where an environmental assessment applies, proof of having processed it. The applicant must also prove sufficient economic, financial and technical solvency to fulfil it.

It is authorised at the same time as the mining title, following a prior report from the environmental authority, and becomes a special condition of that title. Beforehand, it undergoes public consultation for at least 30 days; if the project requires an environmental impact assessment, 1 single public consultation serves for both.

Once the title is granted, work cannot begin until 2 financial guarantees are put in place: 1 to rehabilitate the land of the exploitation and another for the mining waste facilities, which is not required for inert waste, non-hazardous non-inert waste or unpolluted soil, unless deposited in a Category A facility. They are calculated by the mining authority and may be set up via cash deposit, bank guarantee or insurance. The rehabilitation guarantee is reviewed annually according to what has already been restored, and its release is not automatic: upon completion, the operating entity must request it in writing.

The mining authority inspects at least 1 time a year from the start of mining operations, including after the closure of waste facilities. Managora can submit the application for authorisation of the plan using your power of attorney and, at the end, the request for the release of the guarantees; the technical content of the plan and its calculation are signed by a competent technician.

If you own a property within the perimeter, hold an adjoining mining right, or are an affected local council or resident, you have several windows of opportunity, and all of them are short. The 1st is the public consultation for the permit or concession: 15 days from publication in the BOE. Once this deadline has passed, no objection is admitted, even if the notice is published in the provincial gazette later.

The 2nd is the public consultation for the environmental impact assessment, if the project requires one: at least 30 working days. The 3rd is that of the restoration plan, of at least 30 days, which coincides with the previous one when there is an environmental assessment.

An effective written submission (alegación) goes beyond a generic rejection. It is backed by proof of property ownership (land registry extract or title deed), the map or coordinates of the perimeter, and what the file fails to justify: land that is not free, overlaps with other rights, unguaranteed financing, shortcomings in the restoration plan or unstudied environmental effects.

Managora drafts the written submissions (alegaciones) or formal objection and submits them using your power of attorney within the deadline. This corresponds to our service sheet for written submissions (alegaciones) against a mining permit: you can view the updated fee on the sheet. It is advisable to instruct us on the very day you see the notice, as 15 days pass very quickly.

These are 2 distinct statuses that are often confused. A European Strategic Project is recognised by the European Commission under Reglamento (UE) 2024/1252 (CRMA). It is only available for the 17 strategic raw materials listed in Annex I, including battery-grade lithium, tungsten and rare earths for permanent magnets, which form 1 single entry. Critical raw materials in Annex II (34 in total) that are not strategic, such as antimony, do not qualify for this status.

The application is submitted by the promoter to the Commission using the single template set out in Reglamento de Ejecución (UE) 2025/2194 (Implementing Regulation), and contains, among other things, the resource classification according to the United Nations Framework Classification, the permitting timetable, a public acceptance plan, the business plan and job estimates. The Commission decides within 90 days from when the application is complete, extendable by another 90, and the affected Member State may object and block recognition. The next call for applications is announced for late 2026.

Recognition does not replace any permit or the environmental assessment, but it caps the processing time: 27 months if the project includes extraction and 15 if it is only processing or recycling (24 and 12 if it was already being processed), extendable by 6 and 3 months in exceptional cases. The time taken by the promoter to prepare the environmental impact study does not count towards this limit. The clock starts when the single point of contact acknowledges that the application is complete, for which it has 45 days. Furthermore, the project is considered to be of public interest.

In Spain there is 1 point of contact per autonomous community (in Andalusia, the Dirección General de Minas; in Extremadura, the Dirección General de Industria, Energía y Minas; in Galicia, the Dirección General de Planificación Energética y Minas) and, for state-level projects or those spanning more than 1 region, 2 state bodies: the Subdirección General de Minas of MITECO for extraction and the Subdirección General para el Impulso de Proyectos Industriales of the Ministerio de Industria y Turismo (Ministry of Industry and Tourism) for processing and recycling. Spain has 7 projects on the 1st list (March 2025) and 2 on the 2nd (9 October 2026).

The Spanish status is different: Real Decreto 731/2026 (Royal Decree), in force since 18 September 2026, allows extraction, processing or circular economy projects involving critical raw materials to be declared a Proyecto Estratégico de Inversión (Strategic Investment Project). Applications may be submitted from the date to be determined, once the electronic systems are enabled and the scoring criteria and methodology are published. The application is filed online before the portal of the Comité de Inversiones Estratégicas (Strategic Investments Committee), with a statement of compliance confirming that the applicant is up to date with Hacienda (the Spanish Tax Agency) and the Seguridad Social (Spain's Social Security system); the preliminary declaration arrives in 1 month and the final declaration, from the Comisión Delegada del Gobierno para Asuntos Económicos (Government Delegated Commission for Economic Affairs), in 3 months, with administrative silence meaning rejection. Purchases of shares or equity stakes, capital increases or reductions, and structural corporate modifications are excluded.

Managora prepares the European application, which the promoter sends from their own account on the Commission's portal, and submits the Real Decreto 731/2026 application using your power of attorney. We cover this in detail in our guide on the European Critical Raw Materials Act.

This is an obligation under Article 27 of the CRMA with a fixed deadline. Operators required to have a mining waste management plan must submit to the mining authority, no later than 24 November 2026, a preliminary economic assessment study regarding the potential recovery of critical raw materials from the waste stored in their facility and from the waste being generated.

The study must include at least an estimate of the quantities and concentrations of critical raw materials, the methods used to estimate them, and an assessment of the technical and economic feasibility of recovering them. New facilities must submit it alongside their waste management plan.

There is an exemption: operators are exempt if they demonstrate to the authority, with a high level of certainty, that their waste does not contain technically recoverable critical raw materials. Closed or abandoned facilities are not the responsibility of the operator: they are entered into a database that the State must create.

If you subsequently wish to exploit a spoil heap or tailings pond that is undergoing closure or is already closed, the route is governed by the Mining Act: first, the declaration of the resource as Section B, which is announced in the provincial gazette with 30 days of public consultation; if the facility is still active, an authorisation from the competent authority suffices. The content of the study is technical and geological; Managora compiles the file using your technician's data and submits it using your power of attorney before the mining authority of your autonomous community.