Start with the thing most English-language pages get wrong: Spain has no national list of work you may do without permission. The state law says every act of building needs whatever the region and the town hall require, and it does not name a single threshold. That is not a gap in this page, it is the answer.
Three sentences from the state law do the work here, and each of them lands harder on a foreign owner than on a Spanish one.
Every act of building needs whatever authorisation the regional and municipal rules require. The national law does not name a size, a threshold or a list of jobs; it points at the other layer of government. That is why there is no Spanish equivalent of the French table.
Todo acto de edificación requerirá del acto de conformidad, aprobación o autorización administrativa que sea preceptivo, según la legislación de ordenación territorial y urbanística, debiendo ser motivada su denegación.Silence never gives you a right that breaks the planning rules. If the town hall does not answer, you have not been given permission by default, and a builder who tells you otherwise is telling you something the law says out loud is impossible.
En ningún caso podrán entenderse adquiridas por silencio administrativo facultades o derechos que contravengan la ordenación territorial o urbanística.For a handful of acts the decision has to be express, and silence counts as a refusal. New build is on that list, which matters if your renovation turns into a rebuild. The list has other items too, and the quote below skips straight to the one that concerns a renovation; read the article at the source for the rest, and for the part of it that no longer stands.
Con independencia de lo establecido en el apartado anterior, serán expresos, con silencio administrativo negativo, los actos que autoricen: [...] b) Las obras de edificación, construcción e implantación de instalaciones de nueva planta.Read that list at the source, because parts of it no longer stand. The Constitutional Court struck down passages of items a) and d) and upheld the ones about new build. Anyone quoting the whole list as current law is quoting a version that was cut back.
Téngase en cuenta que se declaran inconstitucionales y nulos los incisos destacados de las letras a) y d) y son constitucionales, en los términos establecidos por el fundamento jurídico 23, el inciso destacado de la letra b) y la letra c) del apartado 4, por Sentencia 143/2017, de 14 de diciembre.Your answer sits with the town hall, so the useful thing is to arrive with the right terms. These four are the ones the paperwork uses, and the first one is already being typed by English speakers searching about Spain.
Naming the gaps is part of an honest answer, especially on a subject where the honest answer is that the detail lives somewhere else.
Sources checked on 2026-08-18, each with the version the consolidated text itself carries.
Once you know which route applies, the tax on the work is a separate question: IVA on building work in Spain. And the costs sit on renovating a house in Spain.
No. The national law names no size, no threshold and no list of jobs you may do freely. It says an act of building needs whatever authorisation the regional and municipal rules require, and those rules differ by town. Any page that gives you a national square metre figure for Spain has made it up.
The law answers that one directly: rights that go against the planning rules can never be acquired through administrative silence. So a lack of reply is not a yes, and for some acts silence counts explicitly as a refusal.
In the ordenanza of your municipality, and in the rules of your autonomous community above it. Ask the town hall directly with the address, and use the Spanish terms below when you do.