Second Chance Law in Spain for Autónomos: Hacienda, Seguridad Social and the Microenterprise Procedure

Yes. The discharge of unsatisfied liabilities (exoneración del pasivo insatisfecho), which is the legal name for the Second Chance mechanism, can be requested by any natural person, whether or not they are a business owner, provided they are a debtor in good faith. An autónomo is a natural person: their business debts and personal debts belong to them and are treated together. You must be in current or imminent insolvency, meaning you cannot regularly pay your debts as they fall due or you foresee that you will be unable to do so within the next 3 months. The law does not set a minimum debt amount, but if at the end there is only 1 creditor left, the procedure is closed without reaching a discharge.

What changes for the autónomo is the procedural route. If you are still trading and qualify as a microenterprise, the law requires you to use the special procedure for microenterprises, in force since 1 January 2023, rather than general insolvency proceedings (concurso de acreedores). If you have already closed your business, majority legal doctrine holds that you go through general insolvency proceedings, although the Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo) has not yet ruled on this. And if what you owe arises from personal guarantees given for a company, your discharge is personal to you and goes through your own procedure, because the discharge does not extend to the company.

It is no longer necessary to first attempt an out-of-court agreement with creditors or to have paid a minimum percentage of the debt: those requirements disappeared with the 2022 insolvency reform. Good faith is measured today against a closed list of grounds for exclusion, which are explained below.

It is mandatory for an active autónomo who, when applying, meets 2 conditions: having employed an average of fewer than 10 workers in the previous year (having 0 workers also qualifies) and having an annual turnover below €700,000 or liabilities below €350,000, according to the latest closed accounts from the previous financial year. Meeting 1 of the 2 financial figures is sufficient. Anyone who fits these criteria cannot choose general insolvency proceedings or a restructuring plan: they are governed solely by this procedure.

Everything is electronic. It is processed using the standardised forms of the Electronic Microenterprise Service (Servicio Electrónico de Microempresas), which are official and free of charge, and appearances, hearings and statements take place online, so you do not have to travel to court. A lawyer and a procurador are mandatory: the debtor cannot file it on their own. It is decided by the Commercial Section of the Court of First Instance (Sección de lo Mercantil del Tribunal de Instancia) in your provincial capital or, where there is none, a judge of the Civil Section of the Court of First Instance in the capital.

It has 2 tracks. The continuation track, for a viable business, with a plan that may include debt write-downs (quitas) and payment deferrals (esperas). The liquidation track, in which assets are sold through the Asset Liquidation Platform (Plataforma de Liquidación de Bienes, PLABI) and liquidation operations cannot last more than 3 months, extendable by 1 additional month. If 85% or more of your debts are public-law claims, a frequent situation for an autónomo who owes primarily to Hacienda and the Seguridad Social, only liquidation is permitted.

The procedure by itself does not cancel anything: when it finishes, the autónomo remains liable for whatever was not paid, unless they obtain a discharge. This discharge is requested under the general rules of the Insolvency Act after liquidation or if the continuation plan fails. And there is a deadline that you should not miss: the duty to request the opening of the procedure is 2 months from when you knew, or ought to have known, of your current insolvency.

Yes. Spanish law does not require you to cease trading in order to obtain a discharge: the debtor can apply for it whether or not they are a businessperson, and they do not have to deregister from RETA (the special Social Security scheme for autónomos) to do so. During the special procedure, you retain control over the administration of your assets, although you may only carry out acts of disposal aimed at continuing the business and at market price.

Under the continuation track, the business stays open and pays in accordance with the plan. 2 dates determine whether that plan binds Hacienda and the Seguridad Social: notifying the AEAT (Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria, the Spanish Tax Agency) and the General Treasury of the Seguridad Social (Tesorería General de la Seguridad Social), within 72 hours, that you have applied to open the procedure, together with an updated acknowledgement of debt; and filing the application to open the procedure within the month following 3 months of generalised non-payment of taxes or contributions. If 1 of the 2 fails, the write-downs and deferrals in the plan do not affect those claims. Nor can the plan touch the privileged portion of public debt or apply write-downs or deferrals to Seguridad Social contributions for common and occupational contingencies.

In liquidation, attachable assets are sold, while unattachable assets remain excluded. Whatever creditors do not recover from that sale is what you subsequently ask to have discharged. Opening the procedure halts enforcement actions against your assets, except for privileged public claims and certain Seguridad Social contributions, and except for claims with real security (garantía real) unless requested in the cases permitted by law. Suspending an embargo (seizure) is not the same as cancelling the debt.

The general rule is that public debt is not discharged, with a capped exception: the first €5,000 are discharged in full and, above that amount, 50% is discharged up to a maximum of €10,000 discharged. That maximum cap is reached at €15,000 of debt. With €8,000 owed to Hacienda, €6,500 are discharged and €1,500 remain; with €30,000, €10,000 are discharged and €20,000 remain.

The Supreme Court, in judgments of 18 February 2026, established 2 criteria that favour the autónomo. The first is that the cap applies separately to each public-law creditor: the AEAT, the General Treasury of the Seguridad Social, the local council (ayuntamiento) or the autonomous community, even though the literal wording of the law only mentions the first 2. With €14,000 owed to Hacienda and €11,000 owed to the Seguridad Social, €9,500 and €8,000 are discharged respectively, totalling €17,500. The second is that subordinated public debt, meaning surcharges, interest and penalties that are not very serious (muy graves), is discharged in full, and the cap only applies to the remainder.

The discharged amount is applied first to the lowest-ranking claims and, within each class, according to their age. Personal income tax (IRPF) withholdings that you deducted and failed to pay over carry a full general privilege, and the rest of the public debt carries a general privilege as to 50%, so what usually remains outstanding is the privileged portion. This treatment only applies to the first discharge: in a second discharge, none of the public debt is discharged.

For whatever remains outstanding with Hacienda, you can apply for a payment deferral under the general tax rules, subject to their limits: tax withholdings and payments on account cannot be deferred, nor can output VAT (IVA repercutido), unless you prove that it was never collected. Managora prepares and submits that application through our AEAT deferral service; you can see the updated fee on the service page.

According to the wording of the law, a discharge cannot be obtained by anyone who, in the previous 10 years, has been given a final penalty for a very serious (muy grave) tax, Seguridad Social or labour offence, or a final order transferring tax liability (derivación de responsabilidad), unless it has been paid in full by the time the application is filed. Penalties for serious (graves) offences only exclude you if they exceed 50% of the amount dischargeable before the AEAT, unless paid in full. You are also excluded if your insolvency is declared culpable (at fault), if you provided false or misleading information, or if you incurred debts recklessly or negligently; in this last case, the judge assesses, among other things, whether the business owner used early warning tools.

The same Supreme Court judgments of 18 February 2026 clarified this regime. A very serious tax or Seguridad Social penalty does exclude you. A transfer of liability (derivación de responsabilidad), however, only excludes you if it is proven to arise from fraudulent conduct by the company director comparable to a very serious offence: the Supreme Court treats it as a collection guarantee, not as a punishment. Furthermore, good faith is defined as the absence of these grounds for exclusion, the judge verifies it ex officio even if no creditor objects, and the debtor must provide the required information, including the origin of any debts that were disproportionate to their income at the time.

There are 2 further risks worth measuring. In the microenterprise procedure, a deviation of more than 20% in declared assets, liabilities, income or expenses, subject to a minimum of €10,000, renders the procedure culpable and closes the door to a discharge. And if the culpable finding stems solely from having filed late, the judge may take into account the circumstances of the delay, but is not obliged to do so. That is why the forms are reconciled against the certificates from each public body before filing.

Finally, you must list all debts: the discharge only covers the claims that the debtor listed and that are identified in the court order. A debt forgotten on the list is not cancelled.

The law describes a microenterprise owner in the present tense, as someone who carries out an activity. For that reason, majority legal doctrine holds that someone who is no longer trading goes through the general insolvency procedure for natural persons, and not the special microenterprise procedure. There is no Supreme Court case law yet and some courts look at the business origin of the debt when the closure is recent, so the procedural route is decided case by case.

If you have no assets to liquidate, the usual route is an assetless insolvency (concurso sin masa), which accounted for 85.4% of insolvencies in the 1st quarter of 2026 and 83% in the 2nd quarter, according to the Association of Registrars (Colegio de Registradores). The judge declares the insolvency without further orders and calls the creditors: those representing at least 5% of the liabilities have 15 days from the official notice to request an insolvency practitioner (administrador concursal), whose fees they pay themselves. If nobody requests one, you apply for the discharge within the following 10 days, and the judge grants it only after verifying the legal requirements ex officio.

For this route, the required documents include proof of tax deregistration (since 3 February 2025 this is modelo 036, because modelo 037 was abolished; for earlier deregistrations, modelo 037 is valid), deregistration from RETA, debt certificates from the AEAT and the Seguridad Social, and your IRPF tax returns for the last 3 years. From the declaration of insolvency, no new enforcement actions may be started against your assets and those already underway are suspended, with exceptions such as administrative enforcement proceedings (apremios administrativos) where an embargo was placed earlier on assets not necessary for the business activity.

Yes. What you owe as a personal guarantor (avalista) is your own debt, and the discharge covers all debts of a natural person except for the statutory exceptions. A shareholder or director who signed personal guarantees or credit policies for their company can file for their own insolvency and apply for their own discharge. If that director has no business activity of their own, the statute does not clarify whether they go through general insolvency or the special microenterprise procedure, so the route is decided case by case.

Your discharge does not release the company or the other guarantors or co-guarantors: the bank can continue claiming against them. What is affected is the right of recourse (crédito de regreso), for instance where another shareholder paid the whole debt and wants to claim your share back from you. And the company follows its own separate procedure, because the discharge does not apply to a legal entity.

2 risks must be assessed before applying. If in the company's insolvency procedure you were declared a person affected by a culpable qualification (calificación culpable), that declaration excludes you from obtaining a discharge, a rule that the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld as valid on 10 April 2025. And if Hacienda transferred debt to you from the closed company as a subsidiary liable party, that transfer only blocks your discharge if it arises from fraudulent conduct; otherwise, that debt is a public-law claim and enters the discharge subject to the statutory cap.

If you are married under a community of property regime (gananciales), the discharge of community debts does not extend to your spouse unless they also obtain their own discharge.

Managora is an online gestoría (administrative management firm) and law firm, with our own practising lawyer and procurador. We determine the right route (special procedure or general insolvency), check the percentage of public debt and any grounds for exclusion, reconcile your list of creditors against official certificates, prepare and file the forms and the application, assist you in online court appearances, and request the discharge. Following the court order granting discharge after liquidation, or final discharge following a payment plan, we can formally request credit default registers and each creditor, including those reporting to CIRBE (the Bank of Spain's Risk Information Centre), to update their records through our post-discharge register removal service.

You upload your details and documents via our website and grant the power of attorney to the procurador, which must be a special power for insolvency proceedings. You can grant it free of charge and in person before the court clerk (letrado de la Administración de Justicia) at any court office, without a digital certificate or Cl@ve (Spain's official electronic login system for public services), or online via the Electronic Judicial Portal (Sede Judicial Electrónica) if you have an electronic DNI or digital certificate. We never ask for your digital certificate or your Cl@ve password. At the end, you sign the declaration confirming that you do not fall under any ground for exclusion.

Official third-party costs are minimal. The court tasa (official fee) is €0, because natural persons are exempt. The tariff for the procurador is subject to maximum caps set by Real Decreto 434/2024 (Royal Decree 434/2024 on court representatives' fees) and on our service page it is included within our price. If an insolvency practitioner is appointed, their cost depends on who requests them and why. Our fee for the Second Chance Law procedure is a fixed one-off price: you can see the updated amount on our service page. What we cannot promise is the outcome, because the discharge is granted by the judge.