Buying an appliance, a piece of furniture, or a garment on a Sunday can be easy or impossible depending on the autonomous community, the municipality, or even the street where the establishment is located. The study The chaos of schedules: 390 regulations on commercial hours, prepared by La Distribución Anged, counts 19 autonomous calendars and 370 municipal regulations that make up a framework of 389 different rules on commercial hours in Spain.
The report identifies this fragmentation as one of the main features of the current regulatory model. In the midst of the digital era, marked by the strong competition from Asian platforms like Shein, Temu, and Aliexpress (the latter two recently sanctioned by the Commission for serious violations), any store larger than 300 square meters may be forced to close 56 Sundays and holidays a year in most of Spain.
Spain, among the European countries with the most restrictions
The Retail Restrictiveness Indicator from the European Commission indicates that Spain is the third country in the European Union with the most restrictions regarding commercial hours, only behind Austria and Germany. It also notes that 12 European countries have full freedom of hours —Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Croatia, Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria— and that five others enjoy almost total flexibility: Denmark, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania.
The document also highlights that stores larger than 300 square meters are the only establishments in the entire service sector that are legally prohibited from opening on Sundays and holidays.
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For La Distribución Anged, the regulation of commercial hours constitutes "a paradigmatic example of the fragmentation of the single market and the overlapping of restrictions" and represents "an attack on the freedom of choice of consumers".
The association argues that many citizens need flexibility, or simply want to dedicate part of their free time to shopping, and that any other service activity can open on those days and organize its offer in the way it considers most appropriate for its customers.
A labyrinth of 389 rules
The regulation that governs this aspect in Spain is the Commercial Hours Law, which establishes that each autonomous community must authorize at least ten Sundays and holidays for stores larger than 300 square meters. From that minimum, each territory develops its own calendar, resulting in 19 different autonomous regulations.
Currently, most autonomous communities remain at that legal minimum. Only the Community of Madrid and Ceuta allow total freedom of hours. Andalusia, the Region of Murcia, and Melilla authorize 16 Sundays and holidays; Castilla-La Mancha, 12; the Community of Valencia, 11; Aragon, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Catalonia, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja, and Asturias, 10; Navarra, 9; and the Basque Country, 8.
In the words of Anged, most of the regulations approved since the 1990s have had "a single objective: to roll back commercial freedom and discriminate against certain business models". The association believes that a company operating throughout the national territory ends up subjected to 19 autonomous calendars and 370 municipal regulations that create "artificial borders for consumers".
The Areas of High Tourist Affluence multiply the differences
To the autonomous regulations are added the 370 Areas of High Tourist Affluence (ZGAT) spread throughout Spain. Specifically, Catalonia concentrates 90 ZGAT; the Community of Valencia, 74; Canary Islands, 49; Balearic Islands, 44; and Andalusia, 35. The rest are distributed among the other autonomous communities.
This figure was created in 2012 to advance commercial freedom in those municipalities that met a series of requirements. However, they comment in Anged, the ZGAT "have achieved the opposite effect". The association claims that numerous municipalities and autonomous communities have limited the streets and periods of application, "even going so far" as to expressly exclude stores larger than 300 square meters to maintain the statu quo of the restrictions. Likewise, it argues that the logic used to justify the autonomous calendars and the ZGAT "is anticompetitive". "No one would think of imposing by law what days one can have a drink or go out to dinner, go to the movies, or spend a night in a hotel. This absurdity only applies to commerce," they emphasize in Distribution.
The report illustrates this situation with several examples: in Catalonia, during some Sundays and holidays in June, it is possible to buy fireworks, but a consumer who wants to change the refrigerator, buy a bed, or acquire a swimsuit must do so online or look for a store located within a ZGAT. It also mentions cases such as those of Granada, Córdoba, San Sebastián, La Coruña, Zaragoza, or Santa Cruz de Tenerife among many others, where the delimitation of these zones creates a "border effect" between adjacent streets.
An unequal map: this is how hours change according to the city
Gathering data from the Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Employment of the Community of Madrid, the report indicates that the commercial freedom implemented in 2012 has resulted in more than 2.68 billion euros in additional regional GDP and the creation of more than 15,500 jobs.
Barcelona features in another of the highlighted cases. The study recalls that in 2022 the city expanded its Zone of High Tourist Affluence, allowing it to open 20 Sundays and holidays between May 15 and September 15, from 12:00 to 20:00 hours and only in eight districts. Citing data from Barcelona Oberta, the report notes that during the first year this measure generated 306 million euros in additional commercial turnover, an annual increase of 9.5% in sales, and between 1,600 and 1,800 additional jobs.
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In Andalusia, they highlight Málaga as the city that has bet the most on commercial freedom, compared to Seville, where the opening is limited to certain streets and periods, and to Córdoba, Granada, and Jerez, whose current City Councils - after the push for business freedom achieved in the last legislature - have returned their cities to a very restrictive model for commercial activity more typical of the 80s – when ecommerce did not even exist – than of today's consumption reality.
Likewise, it mentions striking examples such as A Coruña, where the delimitation of the ZGAT includes the surroundings of the Tower of Hercules and the San Amaro cemetery, as well as those of Badajoz and Vigo, where the study indicates that the current restrictions cause some consumers to cross the border into Portugal to make their purchases taking advantage of the commercial freedom existing in the neighboring country.
The rise of Temu and Shein
With data from the Tax Agency collected in the investigation, Spain is the country with the highest penetration of Asian platforms and one in three packages purchased online comes from China. Furthermore, the number of shipments under 150 euros, exempt from tariff payments, has quadrupled since 2021 to exceed 200 million packages per year.
Anged asks: "Would anyone think of disconnecting the mobile data network on Sundays to avoid shopping online?". The association argues that today "it is easier to import products from China through a digital platform than to open a store on a Sunday" and considers that, with the prohibition of opening on Sundays and holidays, "we are giving away almost two months to platforms like Temu or Shein free of competition".
The problems of commerce go far beyond Sundays
The study identifies a series of factors that, in the opinion of Distribution, explain the main challenges of commerce beyond the regulation of hours. Among them are the increase in costs, generational change, digitalization, social changes, the lack of professionals, absenteeism, and greater rigidity of the labor market.
Extracting information from the Spanish Confederation of Commerce (CEC), the report points out that one in three small businesses cannot find a successor for their business and that 70% will end up closing. The text also notes that there are 16,000 unfilled vacancies due to a lack of professionals with the appropriate training and that urban concentration, population aging, and new consumption habits have forced the sector to reinvent itself.
Anged's experts assert that "closing stores on Sunday does not solve any of the structural problems of commerce". For them, the increase in taxes, the rise in contributions for self-employed workers, new regulations in areas such as the environment, the increase in the minimum wage, or time registration have added costs and reduced the margins of the sector, so they argue that commerce, regardless of its size, needs "a regulatory, fiscal, and labor environment favorable to investment and growth".
What impact would reducing trade barriers have
With estimates included in the European Commission's Single Market Strategy, the study indicates that removing only 10% of the existing barriers in retail would allow for an increase of 9.55 billion euros in the production of the Spanish economy, measured in terms of Gross Value Added (GVA). It adds that this improvement could be achieved at no fiscal cost to the taxpayer through a reform aimed at simplifying the regulatory framework and promoting market unity.
They emphasize that trade constitutes a strategic ecosystem for the Spanish economy: for every 100 direct jobs, it generates another 59 indirect ones in sectors such as energy, industry, agri-food, logistics, technology, security, cleaning, or consulting. Spain, they indicate in Anged, "has enormous growth potential" if public officials decisively address the promotion of the internal single market and implement effective measures to remove the country from the group of member states with the highest restrictions on commercial hours.