🇪🇸 SMS Destination Guide for Spain

Compliance in Spain

• Opt-in: The LSSI requires prior consent or a prior contractual relationship before sending promotional SMS, and the GDPR and LOPDGDD require consent, opt-out lists and unsubscribe handling.
• Sending times: There is no legal restriction on days or times for promotional SMS, but voluntarily avoiding Sundays and public holidays is recommended as best practice; time restrictions apply only to calls under Article 96 of the Consumer Protection Law.
• Restricted content: Hate content · Firearms · Illegal substances including marijuana, cannabis and prescription drugs
• Registration: The Spanish regulator CNMC has created a mandatory Registry of Aliases for alphanumeric sender IDs, and from September 15th 2026 unregistered aliases will be rejected by operators in Spain. CNMC registration is mandatory from June 2026 for A2P SMS messages. Alias registration is done through the CNMC portal, and the VAT ID used on the portal must match the one used for whitelisting with the messaging provider. Access to the CNMC portal is limited to Spanish citizens with valid identification and to European citizens with eIDAS-compatible certificates from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden. Companies from other countries need a representative in Spain acting in the alias registry on their behalf, and the regulator provides letter of authorization templates for Spanish and foreign individuals, legal entities and public administrations. Any third party involved in delivering the messages must also be declared in the alias registry.
• For SMS and MMS, aliases must follow the 3GPP TS 23.038 7-bit default alphabet, be 3 to 11 characters long, and may use letters a-z and A-Z including ñ/Ñ and ç/Ç, digits 0-9, spaces, and the special characters @, &, -, _, . and +.
• Aliases are case sensitive.
• Aliases may not contain consecutive spaces or leading or trailing spaces, accented characters, symbols such as #, %, (), commas, /, :, ;, <, >, =, ¡, !, ¿, ?, [], € or similar currency symbols, and may not be exclusively numeric.
• For RCS, aliases follow GSMA RCC.07 v14.0 and Universal Profile v3.1, must be clearly linked to the registrant's brand, trade name, legal entity name or domain, and may not contain consecutive, leading or trailing spaces or be exclusively numeric.
• Prohibited aliases include personal or place names not clearly linked to the registrant, aliases that create confusion with public authorities or third-party companies, aliases containing offensive or discriminatory expressions or content inciting hatred or contrary to public order, and trivial variations of an already registered alias designed to circumvent a rejected or blocked registration.
• Sensitive content such as sex, alcohol, tobacco, political, religious, gambling and betting, marijuana or CBD/THC, vaping, debt collection and forgiveness, high-risk financial services including payday loans, third-party auto, mortgage and student loans and cryptocurrency, and third-party lead generation is allowed with nuances under local regulation.
• Gambling and betting content is allowed only if subscribers have explicitly opted in, and is fully forbidden for those under 18 years old.
• The AEPD can fine up to 20 million euros for lack of consent.
• Ministerial Order TDF/149/2025 establishes anti-fraud measures for calls and SMS as of March 7th 2025, restricting the use of numeric sender IDs in A2P SMS.
• National numeric sender IDs, including short codes and long numbers starting with +34, are not allowed outside the valid A2P numbering ranges, and operators may block traffic from Spanish numeric sender IDs known to be inactive or unassigned even if part of the national numbering plan.
• There are currently no restrictions on SMS using a long-number sender ID that does not start with +34.

These rules are what we generally check against, however they may not be up-to-date. We'll always keep you informed of what is needed for each destination throughout any registration process.