What the free offering does provide
- A legally valid basic contract for a standard residential tenancy (art. 2 LAU), ready to download as Word or PDF.
- From the good sources (OCU, idealista): adapted to recent legislation at the time of publication.
- Cost: €0. For an owner who reads Spanish and has a standard situation, that is a serious argument.
Where it stops
The free templates are generic — they have to be, because they serve the whole of Spain with a single document. That is precisely where the four gaps sit that catch an overseas landlord:
- You are signing what you cannot read. The contract must be in Spanish (only that text binds the parties). Without a clause-by-clause explanation you do not know what you are agreeing to — and in a dispute, “I didn't know” is no argument.
- The deposit is regional; the template is national. How much deposit, lodged with which office, within what deadline — that differs per autonomous region and changes regularly (Andalucía abolished the lodging duty on 24 January 2026, Ley 5/2025). No free template handles this for your region.
- A seasonal let needs substantiation, not boilerplate. A temporada contract (art. 3.2 LAU) stands or falls with the demonstrable temporary reason and the evidence file. A generic “contrato de temporada” without a causa clause and annexes invites reclassification as a residential tenancy — five years of tenant protection you never saw coming.
- Nobody warns you when the law changes. Today's free template is next year's outdated template — there is no version control and no notification.
The comparison, with no thumb on the scales
| Free template (idealista, OCU, ministry) | SpanishRentalContract.com (from €79) | |
|---|---|---|
| Legally valid Spanish basic contract | Yes | Yes |
| Suitable for a standard residential tenancy | Yes, completed correctly | Yes, generated fully completed |
| English explanation of every clause | No | Yes — bilingual instruction document |
| Your region's deposit and lodging rules | No — research it yourself | Yes — amount, office and deadline, with source and reference date |
| Temporada with causa substantiation and evidence file | Limited — generic boilerplate | Yes — causa written into the contract verbatim, evidence as an annex |
| The statute behind every claim | Varies | Yes — see our accountability page |
| Notification and revision when the law changes | No | Yes — twelve months included |
| Price | €0 | From €79 |
Honest advice: if you are letting a standard residential tenancy, read Spanish well and are happy to research your region's deposit rules yourself — then by all means take the OCU or idealista template. Paying only becomes worthwhile the moment one of those three things no longer holds. For most overseas owners letting seasonally, that moment arrives on day one.