The Employment Chamber of the Spanish Supreme Court rules on how to deal with certain cases in which the weekly rest coincides with a holiday. Below, we break down the keys to the most relevant rulings in this regard and their practical implications.
In a previous post on the same subject we had the opportunity to analyze the content of the judgment of February 8, 2023 of the High Court of Justice of Madrid, which, in a brief summary, ruled that in the case under analysis it was not contrary to law for a weekly day of rest to coincide with a holiday.
The foregoing conclusion, as can be seen in view of the legal grounds of the referred decision, was particularly nourished by the different legal nature that the aforementioned days in dispute —weekly rest days and holidays— deserved for the Employment Chamber of the High Court of Justice of Madrid.
However, this ruling was annulled by the Supreme Court ruling of 30 April 2025, in which it concluded that the employees of the company affected by the dispute “working from Monday to Sunday, who have established the weekly rest on a fixed day between Monday and Friday, have the right that, when a working holiday coincides with their day of rest, they are compensated and can enjoy another day of rest for said holiday, without prejudice to the fulfillment of the annual working day”.
The Employment Chamber of the Supreme Court bases the latter in that, although the main purpose of public holidays is to highlight facts of special civic or religious relevance or transcendence, their link with the content of the employment relationship and with the essential elements of the employment contract is unquestionable. This connection is highlighted by the following two aspects:
- Firstly, the holidays referred to in article 37.2 of the Workers’ Statute (WS), from a systematic point of view, are framed in section 5 of the WS, which is responsible for regulating “working time”.
- Secondly, the regime of enjoyment or compensation of public holidays is also delimited by another regulation with a clear impact on labor relations and employment contracts: article 47 of Royal Decree 2001/1983, of July 28, on working hours, special working days and rest periods.
The aforementioned provision establishes that “when, exceptionally and for technical or organizational reasons, it is not possible to enjoy the corresponding holiday or, where appropriate, the weekly rest, the company will be obliged to pay the worker, in addition to the wages corresponding to the week, the amount of the hours worked on the holiday or in the weekly rest period, increased by at least 75 per cent, except for compensatory rest”.
In view of the foregoing considerations, the Employment Chamber of the Supreme Court, paying particular attention to the aforementioned article 37.2 of the WS —particularly provided for considering that the generality of employed workers enjoy their weekly rest on Sunday— reflects on what the intention of the legislator must have been when it set out the possibility that the Government and the autonomous communities may move the rest to the Monday immediately following corresponding to holidays coinciding with Sunday.
In the words of the court, this power of transfer is illustrative of the fact that the legislator’s intention was “that those who work as employees enjoy, not only the weekly rests that are based on the preservation of their occupational health and their livelihood also in the EU directive, but also the 30 calendar days of annual leave, article 38, and, together with the above, up to 14 days of a paid nature and not recoverable as national or regional working holidays”.
Prior to this case, the Supreme Court had already revoked, with its judgment dated July 9, 2024, the other one we cited in our previous post of the High Court of Justice of Madrid, of July 18, 2022, which also endorsed the overlap of weekly rest and holidays. On this occasion, the Supreme Court based its conclusion on the existence of a collective agreement applicable in the company in question from which it understands that the will to improve the duration of the minimum weekly rest is deduced, so it would be contradictory to allow two breaks to overlap that it states that have the same purpose of contributing to rest.
In short, the Supreme Court has determined, in two very specific cases (with a working day from Monday to Sunday, which have established the weekly rest on a fixed day between Monday and Friday, and that of a company in which a special collective agreement was applicable), that the weekly rest could not overlap with the holiday, but it has not established a general doctrine by which this is an automatic rule for any overlap between such a weekly rest and a holiday.
