A Spanish company's directors, powers of attorney and filed accounts are public in the Registro Mercantil and can be bought online for a few euro through the Colegio de Registradores. Its shareholders are not, unless one holds all the shares. Beneficial ownership sits in two registers, the registrars' RETIR and the Ministry of Justice's Registro Central de Titularidades Reales, and since November 2022 neither is open to the public without a legitimate interest.
Fill Easy can order Registro Mercantil information and certificates by email or through the API as part of its company registry search across 60+ jurisdictions. Price and turnaround are confirmed with the order.
Registry
Registro Mercantil; Colegio de Registradores de la Propiedad y Mercantiles de España
Dirección General de Seguridad Jurídica y Fe Pública, Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes
Spain has a Registro Mercantil in every provincial capital and in several island and other cities, each run by one or more registrars who check the legality of every document before it is entered, plus a Registro Mercantil Central that allocates company names. A company acquires legal personality on registration at the Registro Mercantil of its registered office, and every later act, from capital changes to appointments and removals of directors, is entered on its record and published in the BORME, the official gazette of the Registro Mercantil.
The Colegio de Registradores gives online access to all the registries on its electronic office: anyone can order a nota informativa mercantil by company name or NIF, or search the companies of a given director, without subscribing. Fees follow the registrars' tariff (arancel), with the identifying-data block of a nota at about €2.10 and each further item at about €0.60, taxes not included.
Tax identification number (NIF)
9 characters for a legal entity: a letter showing the legal form (A for a sociedad anónima, B for a sociedad de responsabilidad limitada, N for a foreign entity, W for a permanent establishment of a non-resident), 7 digits and a control character, under Order EHA/451/2008. The Registro Mercantil also identifies each company by its registration data (hoja, tomo and folio) in the registry of its registered office.
| Document | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Nota informativa mercantil (nota simple) | Company name, NIF, CNAE activity code, registered domains, registered office, corporate purpose, registration data, share capital, the directors and holders of powers of attorney, pending entries, special situations such as insolvency, the list of acts published in the BORME, the accounts deposited and the books legalised. |
| Depósito de cuentas (filed annual accounts) | The individual and, where filed, consolidated annual accounts: balance sheet, profit and loss account, notes, statement of changes in equity and cash flows, available in XBRL where filed that way, with a comparison of the company's financial position against its sector. |
| Certificación de vigencia y cargos | A registrar's certificate that the company exists and of all the officers currently forming its management body. |
| Certificación de un cargo determinado | A certificate of the current office a named person holds in the company's management body. |
| Certificación de poderes | A certificate that a named person holds a power of attorney for the company, and of the powers granted. |
| BORME entries | The registered acts published for the company in the Boletín Oficial del Registro Mercantil: incorporation, appointments and removals, capital changes, mergers, dissolution and insolvency. |
The nota informativa mercantil, often called a nota simple, is the Registro Mercantil's information extract for a company: name, NIF, registered office, purpose, capital, directors and powers of attorney, BORME entries and accounts deposited. It is ordered online through the Colegio de Registradores and priced by block under the registrars' tariff.
No. The Registro Mercantil records the sole shareholder of a single-member company but not the shareholders of other SLs or SAs. Beneficial owners are held in the RETIR and the Registro Central de Titularidades Reales, which are not open to the public without a legitimate interest.
Under Royal Decree 609/2023, authorities have full access, obliged entities under Law 10/2010 can consult current data for their due diligence, and persons with a legitimate interest, presumed for the media and anti-money-laundering civil-society organisations, can see a limited set of data on current beneficial owners.
The Boletín Oficial del Registro Mercantil, the official gazette in which the acts registered for each company are published, such as incorporations, appointments and removals of directors, capital changes, mergers and insolvency.
Order the depósito de cuentas from the Registro Mercantil through the Colegio de Registradores by company name or NIF. Fill Easy can order them with the nota informativa, with price and turnaround confirmed with the order.