Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2011. It describes Spanish labor practice as of 2011, and the rules for self-employed workers (autónomos) in Spain have changed since then.
There are hardly any differences between a freelance contract and a commercial contract (contrato mercantil, the contract for services a Spanish company signs with a self-employed worker), because in most cases, when a company posts an ad looking for a freelance worker, what it’s really looking for is a self-employed person (autónomo) to sign a commercial contract with.
A freelance worker is an independent worker, so they must be registered as self-employed, just as under a commercial contract. Perhaps the biggest difference you can see between a commercial contract and a freelance contract is that a freelancer is hired for a specific job, and once that job is done, the contract ends automatically.
Another difference is that a freelancer knows in advance how much they will earn (as a general rule), since a price has been put on the specific job before work begins, whereas a self-employed worker on a commercial contract doesn’t get paid if they don’t sell.
While the commercial contract has mostly been used for, and aimed at, self-employed salespeople, sales reps and delivery drivers, the term freelance, even though it means the same as self-employed, has come to describe a contract covering other professions, such as computer programmers, article writers and even various branches of medicine, massage therapists, dietitians, mechanics and so on.
It covers practically any profession, and companies usually turn to freelancers when they have a temporary surplus of work.
In Spain, the term freelance is mostly used when a company needs to subcontract certain services, although as a general rule, most employers who look for a freelancer are really looking for a self-employed worker, and you will work under a commercial contract.
In short, there’s no difference between freelance and commercial contracts, although technically one has a fixed duration (with an uncertain amount of pay) and the other ends when the job is finished (with a price set in advance). Under either contract, you should follow the same advice we gave when we explained the commercial contract, since insurance costs are your responsibility.
Further reading
Featured image: Nenad Stojković, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
