Without prior consent of the company, the Labor and Social Security Inspectorate (L&SSI) needs judicial authorization to access the registered office and the workplace located therein when there is no appreciable physical separation between the two and it has not informed of its desire to access only the workplace area.
For years, the regulations that develop the rules on the action of the L&SSI related to access to workplaces, including those which coincide with the registered office of the legal entity, have been interpreted restrictively, although this is not expressly mentioned in said regulations.
Article 13.1 of Law 23/2015, of 21 July, Authorizing the Labor and Social Security Inspection System establishes:
“In the exercise of their functions, Labor and Social Security inspectors have the character of a public authority and are authorized to:
- To enter freely at any time and without prior notice any workplace, establishment or place subject to inspection and to remain therein. If the center subject to inspection coincides with the domicile of a natural person, they must obtain their express consent or, failing that, the appropriate judicial authorization”.
The express legal reference to the domicile of the natural person seemed to exclude the protection of the registered office of legal persons, but the Supreme Court judgment of April 14, 2026 has concluded that the inspection entry to the registered office cannot be outside the constitutional guarantees linked to the inviolability of the domicile.
The court stresses that Article 18.2 of the Spanish Constitution also protects the inviolability of the domicile of legal persons, and that the absence of an express reference to them in Article 13.1 of the aforementioned law does not change or restrict the direct effectiveness of this constitutional principle.
Therefore, the court understands that, if there is no prior consent on the part of the employer to access the registered office, entry to it requires prior judicial authorization, since, otherwise, the right to the inviolability of the domicile of the legal person in question would be understood to have been violated. And it stresses that this is the case regardless of the purpose of the visit, so that the mere entry without authorization already constitutes an infringement of the constitutional precept per se.
In its analysis, the court studies the case in which the workplace is located in the registered office, establishing that the right to the inviolability of the registered office does not extend to the area of the workplace when there is an appreciable physical separation and the public authority in question informs that its purpose is only to access said workplace area to comply with its legally provided functions.
In short and pending other rulings on the matter or clarifying legal reforms, not all business facilities are open to labor inspection, since, to access certain very specific areas in companies, the L&SSI needs the consent of the company or a judicial authorization.
Sofía Espizua Gordobil
