Spain Company Search Guide 2026: How to Verify a Spanish Business

TL;DR. Spain’s company data is split across 50 provincial Registro Mercantil offices and a Central registry in Madrid, both run by the Colegio de Registradores. Foreign buyers can access free company-name searches via the Registro Mercantil Central portal at rmc.es (partly in English) and free gazette notices via BORME. Certified extracts cost EUR 9-30. No Spanish identity document is required, but the certified extract workflow requires navigating a Spanish-language provincial portal.

What is the official Spain business registry?

Spain’s commercial registry is the Registro Mercantil, a network of 50 provincial offices (one per province) plus the Registro Mercantil Central (RMC) in Madrid. The system operates under the Código de Comercio (Commercial Code) and is managed by the Colegio de Registradores de la Propiedad, Bienes Muebles y Mercantiles de España, a professional body supervised by the Ministry of Justice.

The Registro Mercantil Central acts as a coordination hub: it holds the Denominaciones Sociales register (the official list of all registered company names in Spain), publishes the Boletín Oficial del Registro Mercantil (BORME), and provides online access to filed documents. The portal is at rmc.es. The electronic headquarters for registry services is at sede.registradores.org.

Each provincial Registro Mercantil is the authority for companies domiciled in that province. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Bilbao handle the highest volumes. A Sociedad Anónima (SA) or Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada (SRL/SL) must register in the province where its registered office (domicilio social) is located.

The BORME, Spain’s official commercial gazette, publishes incorporation notices, capital changes, director appointments, and dissolution events. BORME is freely searchable at boe.es/diario_borme.

What can you search?

Registro Mercantil Central (free, public):

• Company name search by exact or partial name match across the national Denominaciones register
• Returns: registered name, province of registration, company type (SA, SL, sucursal, etc.), NIF (fiscal identifier), and current status
• BORME search by company name returns published gazette notices (incorporations, changes, dissolutions) dating back to 1990

Sede Registradores (paid, online):

• Certified nota simple (information note): current registered data including directors, share capital, registered address, and activity description
• Account deposits (cuentas anuales): filed annual accounts including balance sheet and profit/loss statement
• Beneficial ownership inquiry (Consulta de Titularidades Reales): data on ultimate beneficial owners as submitted under AML regulations
• Full certified certification: legally valid certified copy of the full registration record

The RMC portal has a partial English interface covering name search and navigation. Document extraction and the provincial registry workflows are in Spanish only.

BORME (free):

• Full-text search of gazette notices by company name or NIF
• Covers incorporations, capital increases and reductions, director changes, mergers, dissolutions, and insolvency proceedings
• Free download of notices as PDF

How much does it cost?

Prices are approximate based on published fee schedules of the Colegio de Registradores as of May 2026. EUR/USD conversion used: 1.10 (approximate; verify at point of purchase). Payment is by credit card on sede.registradores.org. For provincial offices, payment may also be accepted in person.

Do you need a local account or ID?

For the free BORME search and company name lookup on rmc.es, no account and no Spanish identity document are required. Both are publicly accessible.

For paid documents through sede.registradores.org, a user account is required. Account creation uses an email address and credit card. No Spanish NIF, DNI, or NIE (identity number) is required from foreign applicants. The registration process is in Spanish.

A Spanish electronic certificate (Cl@ve) is not required for foreign users ordering standard registry documents. It is needed for some advanced services such as filing or certified digital submissions.

Is the website in English?

Partially. The Registro Mercantil Central portal at rmc.es has an English/Spanish toggle for the main navigation and the company name search interface. Document output (nota simple, certified certification, annual accounts) is in Spanish only. No automated translation is provided.

The BORME at boe.es has no English interface.

The sede.registradores.org portal for ordering documents is primarily in Spanish. Foreign users who do not read Spanish will need translation assistance to interpret document content.

What’s the turnaround time?

Nota simples and annual account deposits ordered through sede.registradores.org are typically available within a few hours of payment during business hours (Monday to Friday, 09:00-18:00 CET). Same-day delivery is standard for most online requests.

Certified certifications may take 1-2 business days. Counter requests at a provincial Registro Mercantil office are typically completed on the same day or the next working day.

Is there an API?

No public API is available for direct registry extract retrieval from the Registro Mercantil. The sede.registradores.org portal does not publish an open API or a documented data feed for third-party integration.

The BORME is available as a daily XML feed from the Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE) under Spain’s open data initiative. Developers can access BORME structured data at datos.gob.es. This covers gazette notices but not the underlying registry records.

Local data suppliers (see section below) offer API access for company data queries built on top of registry and supplementary sources.

What you legally cannot do

The Colegio de Registradores Terms of Use for sede.registradores.org prohibit:

• Automated bulk downloading of registry documents (nota simples, certified certifications, annual accounts)
• Commercial redistribution of certified documents without authorization from the issuing registry
• Using registry data to build a secondary commercial database of Spanish company records for resale

The BORME data available under Spain’s open data program may be used commercially with attribution. The BOE terms require that users not represent BORME data as independently verified or modify its content in a way that distorts the original notice.

Compliance buyers using the registry for CDD, counterparty due diligence, or AML screening are within the permitted use scope, provided the purpose is documented and access is not automated in bulk.

Spain introduced Beneficial Owner register obligations under Law 10/2010 (AML legislation) and subsequent regulations implementing the EU’s Fourth and Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directives. The Registro Mercantil holds beneficial ownership declarations for Spanish companies. As of May 2026, this data is accessible to obligated entities and competent authorities; broader public access is subject to the EU’s evolving beneficial ownership transparency rules following the Court of Justice of the European Union ruling of November 2022.

Practical tips for foreign users

• Use the NIF as the primary identifier. Every Spanish company has a Número de Identificación Fiscal (NIF), in the format A-99999999 (where the leading letter indicates entity type: B for SL, A for SA, followed by 7 digits and a control character). This is the stable cross-system identifier used across the Registro Mercantil, AEAT (tax authority), and BORME. Record it from the first search and use it for all subsequent lookups.
• Start with the BORME for a free timeline. The BORME gazette dates back to 1990 online and gives a chronological record of corporate events (incorporations, capital changes, director turnover, insolvency notices) at no cost before spending on a certified extract.
• Provincial office matters. The authoritative record for a company is held by the provincial registry where it is domiciled. A Madrid-registered SL is at the Madrid Registro Mercantil, not the Central registry. Use rmc.es to confirm which province holds the record, then order from the corresponding provincial registry through sede.registradores.org.
• Annual accounts filing is mandatory but often late. Spanish SLs and SAs must file annual accounts within 6 months of financial year end. Filing is frequently delayed or incomplete for small private companies. An absence of recent accounts does not mean the company is inactive; check the BORME for recent corporate events as a cross-check.
• SL vs SA disclosure differs. Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada (SL) is the dominant form for SMEs in Spain. Sociedad Anónima (SA) is used for larger companies and listed entities. SAs have more extensive disclosure requirements (mandatory audit for most SAs above certain size thresholds). Check entity type before scoping the due diligence.
• FATF and EU AML context. Spain is a FATF member and an EU member state. It is not on the FATF grey list as of May 2026. Compliance with the EU AML framework (currently transitioning to the new AML package, AMLA regulation) applies. See FATF (fatf-gafi.org) for current country standing.
• Insolvency proceedings are published. The BORME and the public insolvency register (Registro Público Concursal) at publicidadconcursal.es publish insolvency filings. A company subject to concurso de acreedores (insolvency proceedings) will appear there.

Alternatives if you cannot access the registry directly

The Spanish-language barrier and the split between 50 provincial registries make direct access genuinely difficult for non-Spanish-speaking buyers seeking certified documents.

• Local data suppliers (see section below): Informa D&B and Axesor both produce English-language company reports that include core registry data, financial analysis, and credit risk scoring.
• BORME direct access: For a free preliminary check, the BORME is publicly accessible in Spanish at boe.es. No account required.

Local data suppliers

If you need a packaged report rather than a raw Registro Mercantil extract, Spain has a set of established providers:

• Informa D&B (informa.es). Spain’s largest commercial credit bureau, affiliated with Dun & Bradstreet. Covers 600 million companies globally with 375 million data points updated daily. Provides credit reports, risk scoring, payment analysis, ESG intelligence, and compliance tools. Widely used by Spanish banks and multinationals for counterparty risk and KYC.
• Axesor (axesor.es). Spanish business intelligence provider offering company reports, credit risk scoring (Monitoriza platform), director and executive profiles, property registry searches, and commercial registry documentation. Covers Spanish companies and international entities. Used by mid-market companies for ongoing supplier and customer monitoring.
• Iberinform (iberinform.es). Information subsidiary of Atradius Credit and Surety, a global credit insurance leader. Covers 430 million companies across 193 countries, with Spain and Portugal as core markets. Provides financial reports, Insight View platform, API integration, and debt recovery services. Annual data investment exceeds EUR 12 million in purchasing and processing.
• Einforma (einforma.com). Spanish business information provider covering 8.2 million economic agents in Spain and 600 million companies internationally. Offers commercial, financial, and risk reports on Spanish enterprises, access to debt registers (RAI, ASNEF), and executive profiles. New registrants receive five free reports.

Use the Registro Mercantil for the official certified filing record. Use Informa D&B or Axesor when you need payment behavior, credit scoring, or ongoing counterparty monitoring layered on top of the registry data. Iberinform is the choice when the engagement involves credit insurance or trade finance due diligence.

FAQ

Can a foreign company search Spain’s Registro Mercantil without a Spanish identity document?

Yes. The free company name search on rmc.es and the BORME gazette at boe.es require no account and no Spanish identity document. Ordering paid documents (nota simple, certified certification) through sede.registradores.org requires a user account created with an email address and credit card. No NIF, NIE, or DNI is required from foreign applicants.

What is the NIF and how does it differ from the CIF?

The NIF (Número de Identificación Fiscal) is the current tax identifier for Spanish legal entities, replacing the legacy CIF (Código de Identificación Fiscal) following the 2008 reform. For companies, the NIF typically starts with a letter indicating entity type (B for SL, A for SA, etc.) followed by 7 digits and a control character. Older documents may reference the CIF, but the number format is the same. Use the NIF as the primary search identifier across the Registro Mercantil and AEAT systems.

Where do I find directors and shareholders for a Spanish company?

Director information is in the nota simple from the provincial Registro Mercantil. Share capital and shareholder structure for larger companies may be in the filed annual accounts (cuentas anuales). Beneficial ownership declarations (Titularidades Reales) are held by the Registro Mercantil and accessible to obligated AML entities. For listed companies on the Bolsa de Madrid, major shareholdings are disclosed to the CNMV (Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores) and searchable at cnmv.es.

How current is the Registro Mercantil data?

The Registro Mercantil updates when a company submits a filing. Director changes and capital increases must be filed within a defined period of the corporate event. Annual accounts must be filed within 6 months of financial year end (30 June for most companies with a December year-end). Delays are common for small SLs. A nota simple reflects the state of the register at the moment of issue, not necessarily real-time company status. Cross-check with BORME for recent events.

Is Spain on the FATF grey list?

No. Spain is a FATF member country and is not on the FATF grey list as of May 2026. Spain completed its most recent FATF Mutual Evaluation in 2014 with a follow-up process under the standard FATF cycle. For current status, check fatf-gafi.org.

Does Spain have a public beneficial ownership register?

Yes. Spanish companies must file beneficial ownership declarations with the Registro Mercantil under AML obligations. The data is accessible through sede.registradores.org (Consulta de Titularidades Reales). Access to the public-facing portion is subject to the evolving EU framework following the CJEU November 2022 ruling, which restricted unrestricted public access to beneficial ownership data. Obligated AML entities and competent authorities retain broader access rights.

What types of company are registered in Spain?

The dominant forms are the Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada (SL), equivalent to a private limited company, and the Sociedad Anónima (SA), equivalent to a public limited company. Other forms include Sociedad Comanditaria (limited partnership), Sociedad Colectiva (general partnership), Sociedad Cooperativa (cooperative), and Sucursal (branch of a foreign company). The SL is by far the most common form for domestic SMEs and subsidiaries of foreign groups operating in Spain.

Last verified: May 2026. Sources: Registro Mercantil Central (rmc.es), Colegio de Registradores (registradores.org), Boletín Oficial del Registro Mercantil (boe.es/diario_borme), FATF (fatf-gafi.org).