Duty of care and employee accommodation on multi-month assignments in Spain

Duty of care does not end when the flight is booked

For a two-week business trip, duty of care is largely about travel risk, insurance and a contactable hotel. For an assignment measured in months, the calculation changes. The employee is living somewhere, not staying somewhere. Their health, their ability to work, their safety after dark and their willingness to complete the assignment all depend on a property your company chose and, in most cases, contracted for. That is why duty of care employee accommodation questions belong in the placement decision rather than in a post-arrival review.

The practical test is simple. If something went wrong — an employee fell ill in an unheated flat, was locked out at midnight with no one to call, or could not work because the internet failed on a delivery week — could you show that you assessed the accommodation before you placed them there, and that you had an accountable supplier to escalate to? If the answer is no, the exposure sits with the employer, not with the individual who accepted the assignment.

What accommodation quality actually means in a Spanish context

Spain is a comfortable country to live in, which occasionally leads mobility teams to assume that accommodation risk is low. Two things are worth knowing.

First, thermal performance in older Spanish housing stock is inconsistent. Building regulations have tightened considerably over recent decades, but a great deal of urban housing predates modern insulation standards. Winter on the Costa del Sol is mild by northern European standards and still cold enough indoors, in a poorly insulated flat, to make an employee miserable through January and February. Summer works the other way. An employee who cannot sleep is an employee whose performance and health decline in ways that show up on the project before they show up in a survey.

Second, the legal framework matters. Under the reformed Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos introduced by Real Decreto-ley 29/2026 (in force since 8 October 2026), temporary stays accommodating people no longer fall under seasonal leases (arrendamiento por temporada for use other than housing under Title III). Instead, temporary stays are regulated under Title II as temporary housing (arrendamiento de vivienda temporal). Contracts under this regime require an express, provable cause for the temporary relocation and cover an agreed duration generally between 31 days and 12 months. Because Real Decreto-ley 29/2026 is a decree-law that Congress must validate within 30 days, mobility teams should check the legislative position when signing. Furthermore, how this statutory definition applies when a company is the contracting tenant and an employee is the occupant remains an unsettled question that your Spanish legal adviser should confirm. Placing an employee on a consumer listing platform, or on a contract that lacks a justified cause, leaves both the company and the individual on weak ground. Ask any supplier which legal framework their contract operates under and expect a clear answer.

The six things worth checking before you place someone

A duty of care assessment for accommodation does not need to be long. It needs to be written down and consistent across placements. In practice, six areas cover most of the risk:

• Physical safety and access. Who can enter the building, how access is controlled, and what happens if an employee loses their keys at 23:00. Keyless systems remove the lost-key scenario and the awkward physical handover on arrival.
• Indoor climate and air quality. Heating and cooling that actually works, and ventilation that does not depend on leaving a window open onto a street.
• Working conditions. On a multi-month assignment the employee will work from home at least some of the time. A dining table in a studio is not a workstation, and a shared internet connection across a building is a single point of failure on a day that matters.
• Location and after-dark walkability. Distance to transport, shops and a pharmacy, and whether the route home at night is one you would be comfortable defending.
• Escalation route. One named, contactable operator with a service level, rather than a private landlord who answers when convenient.
• Contract and invoicing integrity. A corporate contract and a compliant VAT invoice are not just finance hygiene; they are evidence that the arrangement was made properly.

The last point is often underestimated. When duty of care employee accommodation standards are audited, the paper trail is what an auditor looks at first. A company-to-company agreement with a monthly IVA invoice is a documented, defensible arrangement. A reimbursed personal booking is not.

Why the accommodation choice is also a retention question

Assignment failure is expensive and rarely caused by one dramatic event. It accumulates: poor sleep, no space to work, a flat that never quite feels liveable, a partner who is unhappy. Mobility teams that treat housing as the last line item to be squeezed usually pay for it later in extended timelines, early returns or an employee who declines the next posting.

The reverse also holds. Accommodation that is genuinely comfortable — separate living, sleeping and working space, a real kitchen, in-unit laundry, quiet at night — removes a whole category of friction from the assignment. That is the underlying argument for corporate housing over hotels and listing platforms on stays of several months.

How Palacete 10 is built around this

Palacete 10 is a restored 1908 villa in Málaga with five furnished residences, let company to company. The relevance to duty of care is in the specification rather than the aesthetics. The building has been restored rather than replaced: upgraded wall and roof insulation holds a constant indoor climate despite the building's age, sound-insulating floating floors run between residences, and each residence has individual climate control alongside an aerothermal system for domestic hot water. Each residence has its own secure private Wi-Fi network off the building's central high-speed fibre, and there is a residents-only 24/7 work suite on site.

Access is by smart keyless entry (2N), so check-in needs no physical handover. Each residence includes one secure parking space behind a gated entrance. The neighbourhood is a working local one — public transport and everyday shops a minute's walk away, the historic centre fifteen minutes on foot, the airport sixteen minutes and Málaga TechPark nineteen minutes by car.

Commercially, the arrangement is designed to be auditable: one supplier, one contract, one monthly Spanish VAT invoice covering everything, with utilities managed by us and active from day one. Lease terms are agreed per contract, and one or all five residences can be taken. Practical points on leasing, invoicing and the legal framework are set out on the FAQ page.

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