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Spanish Building Regulations: One National Code
Spain builds to one national Código Técnico de la Edificación (CTE), so there's no region-by-region rule book to track for stairs, ramps or foundations. But a house's minimum room height and floor area aren't set by the CTE at all — each autonomous community fixes those in its own habitability decree, which this hub flags rather than inventing a national number for.
Rules by topic
Find guidance for the work you are doing, then confirm the requirements for your building and location.
Footings & slabs
Room heights
One code for the whole country
Spain builds to one national code: the Código Técnico de la Edificación (CTE), approved under Real Decreto 314/2006. It applies the length and breadth of the country — regional and local rules can also apply to a project. Whether you’re building in Madrid, Andalucía or Galicia, the same national Documentos Básicos (DBs) govern the job.
The CTE is organised into DBs — one per topic. DB-SUA (“Seguridad de Utilización y Accesibilidad”) sets the numbers for stairs, guarding and ramps. DB-SE-C (“Cimientos”) governs foundations. DB-HS (“Salubridad”) covers ventilation, among other health-and-safety topics. The DBs provide a route to meeting the CTE. The design must meet their scope and conditions, plus other applicable rules. This hub carries the DB numbers, and the calculators that solve them.
Where the CTE deliberately says nothing
Here’s the thing most secondary sources get wrong about Spain: a house’s minimum ceiling height and minimum room area aren’t missing from the CTE by accident — they’re not the CTE’s job. Those figures are set by each of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities, in that region’s own decreto de habitabilidad (habitability decree). Cataluña, the Comunitat Valenciana, Madrid and the rest each publish their own decree, on their own numbering, and they’re not amended alongside the CTE.
That’s genuinely out of scope for a national building-code hub — enumerating 17 regional decrees isn’t something this site can do responsibly, and a single number presented as “the Spanish minimum” would be wrong for most of the country. So where a figure lives in a habitability decree rather than the CTE, this hub says so plainly and stops there, rather than guessing or picking one region’s number and presenting it as national. What the CTE does set nationally for a dwelling’s rooms — ventilation — we carry in full.
Read the current edition before you rely on a number
One more thing worth knowing: DB editions change, and a further partial revision of the CTE affecting DB-SUA was in public consultation at the time these figures were checked, not yet adopted. Always confirm the current text of the DB you’re relying on at codigotecnico.org before you sign off on a job.