Rules for business premises in Spain
Complaint form (hoja de reclamaciones)
The hoja de reclamaciones is the official form a customer uses to put a complaint in writing against a Spanish business that sells them goods or services. The form, the notice saying it is available and the procedure are set by each autonomous community; national law allows fifteen days at most to reply.
Also known ashoja de reclamaciones · official complaint form · complaints book · consumer complaint
Who regulates it
There is no national form. Spain's general consumer protection law (the consolidated text approved by Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007) requires every trader to say how customers can complain —at least the channel through which the relationship began, a postal route, a telephone line and an electronic channel— and to reply “within a maximum of fifteen days from the submission of the complaint” (art. 21.3, as worded by Ley 10/2025, in force since 28 December 2025). The official form, the notice and the procedure belong to each autonomous community. Two examples read in their own laws:
- Catalonia. Consumers are entitled to be handed, when they ask, an official complaint or report form, which must also be available online (Consumer Code, Ley 22/2010, art. 126-9.1).
- Community of Madrid. It is an offence not to have complaint forms, to refuse to provide them or not to state clearly and visibly that the premises has them (Ley 11/1998, art. 50.14).
An example: a customer at a dry cleaner's asks for the form because her jacket has come back with a new stain. She is given your region's official form, not one of your own making; she fills it in on the spot, and from that moment the time limit for replying starts running. The useful thing is to have at hand who answers and with what: the ticket, the date and what was done with the garment.
Worth knowing
It is not a suggestion box, and it does not bind every business in the same way. The regional laws read for this entry treat as offences not having the official form, refusing it or failing to display a notice about it. Which businesses need one is set by your region's rules, and it turns on whether you deal with consumers: an office that only works with other businesses may fall outside it. Everything else the law asks of a shop is in the rules for retail premises.
Sources
Related terms
- Activity licence (licencia de actividad)The licencia de actividad is the prior municipal licence to run a business from premises in Spain. Today it is the exception: Ley 12/2012 bans it for retail and the services in its annex up to 750 m², where a self-declaration is enough, and outside that annex the region and the town hall decide.
- Self-declaration (declaración responsable)The declaración responsable is the document in which whoever runs an activity in Spain states, on their own responsibility, that they meet the requirements, hold the papers to prove it and will go on meeting them. It lets them start on the day it is filed, with checks afterwards (art. 69 of Ley 39/2015).