Spain: How should Companies Handle Complaints Received from Employees?

As is well known to all labor law practitioners, employees are entitled to immunity from retaliation—a legal protection afforded to all employees who have filed legal claims against the company.

Specifically, this guarantee entails the right to indemnity for all employees against adverse treatment they may suffer for taking actions to assert their labor rights, whether on their own behalf or through legal representatives.

Thus, the fact of having filed legal claims against the company stands as clear evidence of a violation of fundamental rights, and consequently, unless the company can demonstrate another reason for the dismissal, the courts will declare it null and void.

However, historically, the courts have required that, in order to trigger the indemnity guarantee, complaints must have taken the form of a legal action.

In other words, historically, the Supreme Court only applied the indemnity guarantee to legal claims and not to complaints that an employee might file with the company.

However, the Supreme Court has recently expanded the concept of the indemnity guarantee to cover situations that go beyond mere legal claims.

A good example of this can be found in the ruling of the High Court of Justice of Asturias dated February 17, 2026 (Case No. 1752/2025), which addresses whether the indemnity guarantee should apply in a case where an employee makes claims for the payment and recognition of overtime, both via email and WhatsApp, but not through a legal complaint.

More specifically, in this case, claims were made on November 19 and December 12 and 17, whereas the company initiated disciplinary proceedings just four days after the last claim.

Thus, given the evident temporal proximity between the complaints and the disciplinary proceedings, the court applies the guarantee of indemnity as follows:

“The employee has provided more than sufficient evidence that the employer’s conduct in dismissing him was intended to nip the employee’s legitimate claims in the bud, by getting rid of an allegedly ‘troublesome and demanding’ employee.

Given that barely four days elapsed between the complaints filed by the plaintiff and the notification to him of the initiation of disciplinary proceedings, which culminated in his dismissal a few days later, we must concur with the trial court that there is sufficient evidence of a violation of his guarantee of indemnity.”

In conclusion, even complaints that may seem “apparently” informal are also capable of triggering the guarantee of indemnity; therefore, the company must handle any claims made by employees with sensitivity and strategy, whether brought directly in court, through official channels, or through unofficial channels.