Spain vs UK: Brits on minimum wage in Spain would earn up to €14,500 more at home

A full-time worker on Spain’s minimum wage earns €17,094 a year before tax, while someone on the UK minimum makes roughly €29,600 to €31,600 for a similar week. With a general election just weeks away, the big parties are promising change, but little of it has an exact figure or a date attached.

The UK minimum pays far more for a full-time week 

Spain’s minimum wage is €1,221 gross a month in 14 payments (12 monthly payments plus two extra ones, usually in summer and at Christmas), or €17,094 a year. The UK’s National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over rose to £12.71 an hour in April, up from £12.21.

Over a full-time week of 37.5 to 40 hours, that comes to roughly £24,800 to £26,400 a year before tax. At today’s exchange rate of about €1.19 to the pound, that’s around €29,600 to €31,600, or between €12,500 and €14,500 more than Spain’s minimum, a total pay gap of 73 to 85 per cent. 

Spread over 12 months, Spain’s minimum works out at about €1,425 a month, against roughly €2,470 to €2,630 in the UK.

These are estimates, as the UK rate is paid by the hour and Spain’s is generally set for a full-time month, so hours worked and the exchange rate will always move the figures. The UK rate also rose faster this year, by about 4.1 per cent against Spain’s 3.1 per cent.

The comparison matters to the many Brits working in hospitality, tourism and retail in Spain, as the minimum wage applies to everyone, regardless of their nationality. Spain’s has still climbed by more than 66 per cent since 2018, when it stood at €735.90 a month, but still remains far lower than the UK’s. 

Pay is only half the picture, though

Both figures are before tax. Workers on the UK minimum pay income tax and National Insurance, whereas Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz has said Spain’s minimum wage no longer pays income tax in practice, although anyone with more than one employer must still file a return.

The other major difference is, of course, living costs. These pull in very different directions. Prices in Spain rose 4.9 per cent in the year to September, the highest since February 2023, and since 2018 house prices have climbed almost 64 per cent while wages rose only 27.4 per cent. The latest official figures show house prices still rising by 12.2 per cent a year.

The UK isn’t immune to a squeeze either. Pay growth of 3.7 per cent in the three months to August works out at just 0.6 per cent after inflation, and inflation rose to 3.5 per cent in September. Housing is where the two countries differ most, as UK house prices rose only 0.9 per cent in the year to August, and England’s house price to earnings ratio fell in 2025 to 7.6, its lowest since 2015, because pay grew faster than prices.

Rent is the bill that matters most on low pay, though. The average UK rent is £1,406 a month (about €1,680), rising to £2,338 in London. In Spain, idealista’s June average of €15.30 per square metre works out at roughly €1,224 a month for an 80 square metre flat, around 27 per cent cheaper.

However, the minimum wage is so much lower that Spanish rents take a bigger bite. On those averages, that flat would swallow about 86 per cent of a monthly minimum wage in Spain (spread over 12 months), against a 64 to 68 per cent chunk of a monthly salary for the average UK rent. These are only averages, and a smaller flat or a room would cost less in both countries, but in Madrid, where the average is €23.70 per square metre, the same flat would cost around €1,900, more than the entire monthly minimum.

One June study estimated that a typical UK household spends about £37,400 a year, against £24,600 in Spain, around 52 per cent more. So the UK is dearer on most measures, but Spain’s much lower pay means its rents take a bigger share of a minimum wage, and the raw gap doesn’t exactly settle who is better off.

Some changes are law, some are planned and some are only promises 

Already law is the €1,221 minimum, plus the emergency housing decree published on Wednesday October 7, which caps most rent updates at 2 per cent until the end of 2027. It still needs Congress to ratify it within 30 days, though, and it limits increases rather than cutting rents.

Planned is a rise for 2027. A panel of experts advising labour minister Díaz is due to report this week, and unions UGT and CCOO want at least 7 per cent, about €1,306 a month. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said it will be approved before the election, according to Hoy Aragón, and Díaz has argued that record company profits mean any adjustment should come from the top. 

The government sets the figure after consulting unions and employers, but their agreement isn’t legally required, and it only takes effect once published in the official state gazette (BOE). If that slips past the new year, the rise would be delayed rather than lost, with back pay to January 1, as happened this year.

Then come the promises. Transport Minister Óscar Puente said on Monday October 26 that Spain’s minimum wage would be ‘closer to €2,000 than €1,000’ in the next four years if the PSOE keeps governing, with no figures or timetable, according to Libre Mercado. That wording technically means anything above €1,500 a month, rather than a guarantee of €2,000.

The opposition PP’s candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, promised on Friday October 23 in Valencia that people on the minimum wage wouldn’t pay income tax, with the threshold tied to the minimum by law. He has also said he would agree any rise with unions and employers, and party headquarters is yet to confirm the technical details. 

Put side by side, even those numbers would leave Spain behind. A 7 per cent rise would take the annual minimum to about €18,300, and Puente’s wording would put it at approximately €21,000, against €29,600 or more in the UK today, before the UK rate is adjusted again next April.

Housing has the same problem. Puente blamed ‘greed’ and called for more public intervention, while Feijóo promised a million homes for a new generation of owners, but neither came with a mechanism or timeline, and Puente’s remarks haven’t ammounted to a new measure. 

The experts’ recommendation is due this week and October’s inflation estimate lands on Friday October 30, so the first real sign of whether Spain’s minimum wage will move before the new year should arrive then.