Company Registry Spotlight: Spain

Exploring the Company Registry in Spain: Insights into Business Landscape and Business KYC Compliance

Spain’s Registro Mercantil (Commercial Registry) is the official platform overseen by the Ministry of Justice and managed by the College of Registrars. A national index called the Registro Mercantil Central (RMC) handles name reservations and pulls together key information from provincial registries.​

The registry serves stakeholders including government bodies, businesses, investors, and compliance teams from Spain and abroad.

For Spain, the Registrars’ e-office and RMC provide access, with the main portal here: https://sede.registradores.org/.

The Company Registry in Spain, known as the Registro Mercantil, is publicly accessible, providing digital services through its e-office that require no account for basic searches. Users can find companies by various means, including:

• Company name clearance and reservation via the Registro Mercantil Central (RMC)

• Certified extracts (known as “notas simples”) and information about directors

• Filing of annual accounts and official legalised books

• Published corporate acts in the Official Gazette of the Commercial Registry (BORME)

For those with legitimate interest, the Beneficial Ownership Register (RCTIR) also provides access to detailed ownership data.

Key services of the registry include verifying company names, obtaining certified and plain extracts, confirming appointments of directors and attorneys-in-fact, managing annual account filings, and retrieving official acts as published in BORME. Payments for these services can be made per individual request or through an account arrangement for regular users.

The Registro Mercantil provides useful incorporation documents and corporate data on a variety of entity types. The main entity types listed in the registry are:

• Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada (S.L.)

• Sociedad Anónima (S.A.)

• Sociedad Colectiva and Sociedad Comanditaria

• Branches of foreign companies, sole traders, cooperatives, and professional companies

Searching for a business via its name or number will display the business’s key details, this includes the following:

• Registered name, legal form, share capital, and office address

• Current directors and attorneys-in-fact

• Filing of annual accounts

• Acts published in BORME

Beneficial ownership data (name, birth details, residence, control nature) is available via RCTIR for obliged entities. In addition to these documents, the registry offers valuable data on the company itself, its officers, and ownership. This extensive coverage ensures that information on a wide range of corporate structures is readily available.

Spain has 3.25 million economically active enterprises as of 1 January 2024 (DIRCE, INE). This serves as the official national indicator for active businesses.​ INE

New incorporations reached 117,990 companies in 2024 (INE, based on Registro Mercantil filings), with monthly updates showing continued strong activity into 2025. INE

Spain launched the Beneficial Ownership Register (RCTIR) on 19 September 2023, boosting transparency and AML compliance. Open-data access for company basics followed Law 11/2023 amendments, with new annual-accounts models approved on 26 May 2025.

These upgrades improve timeliness and machine-readability, while BORME remains the key publication channel for all registered acts.

Public company registries make data available to anyone, but pulling information from multiple sources by hand takes compliance teams hours. Each jurisdiction runs its own setup with unique data formats, and Spanish-language documents add another layer of hassle for international users.

That’s why automated KYB solutions such as with KYCL have become essential—they handle the heavy lifting across borders. Real-time registry pulls also catch the latest incorporations that lag behind in standard databases, keeping checks current and complete.

Spain’s Registro Mercantil stands out as a reliable hub for corporate transparency, blending digital access through the RMC and e-office with daily BORME publications and the RCTIR for beneficial ownership details.​

Its legally binding records power efficient KYC and KYB checks, letting compliance teams verify directors, ownership, and filings quickly for AML safeguards. Know Your Customer taps directly into these sources for seamless, real-time verification across Spain’s 3+ million active enterprises, with recent upgrades ensuring the data stays fresh and actionable.