Your subscription cancellation rights in Spain

What the law says

Spain consolidates consumer protection in the LGDCU (Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007): the fourteen-day withdrawal right for distance contracts is non-waivable and must be easy and accessible to exercise without disproportionate effort — a business may not condition, limit or demand justification for it — with refunds due within fourteen days of the request, and the 2022 amendment tightened customer-service obligations around easy access to complaint and withdrawal mechanisms.

The frame to hold onto: Spain has no US-style renewal-notice statute, but its withdrawal-and-access rules bite at the two moments that matter most — the days after an unwanted sign-up or conversion, and the moment a business makes leaving hard.

The withdrawal window, used properly

For distance contracts, fourteen calendar days — from delivery for goods, from conclusion for services — in which you can withdraw freely: no reason, no justification, no conditions a business may lawfully attach. A surprise conversion caught inside that window is the cleanest case in Spanish practice: withdraw in a recorded form, and the refund clock (fourteen days) starts running. For digital services, note the standard EU trade-off: consenting to immediate performance can affect the right — read what you tick.

The easy-exit principle

The LGDCU’s standard is that exercising withdrawal must be easy, accessible and free of disproportionate effort — merely mentioning the right in the terms does not satisfy it. An exit hidden behind a premium phone line, an unanswered form, or a maze of screens is a defect you can name as such, and the 2022 amendment sharpened exactly this customer-service dimension.

Outside the window

Past the fourteen days, the contract’s own terms govern the exit — with the EU’s unfair-terms machinery over them: clauses that impose disproportionate obstacles on leaving are challengeable. The practical sequence is the universal one: cancel in a recorded form, keep the confirmation, dispute post-cancellation charges with documents. Our charged-after-cancelling playbook translates step for step.

The complaint ladder

The supplier in writing first; then the consumer office of your autonomous community (OMIC at municipal level), which mediates with real institutional weight; consumer arbitration (arbitraje de consumo) is Spain’s distinctive, free adjudication track where the business is adhered to it. Documents decide: the sign-up record, your withdrawal or cancellation, their reply.

This page gives general information, not legal advice. Legislation is summarised; the wording that binds is the current text of the law itself. For a contested case, the consumer-protection bodies named above or a local lawyer are the right address.

Source: LGDCU (Real Decreto Legislativo 1/2007), checked September 9, 2026. · How we verify legal content