Días de Cortesía: The August Move That Stops Hacienda’s Clock While You Travel

There is a widely held belief among foreign residents that Spain switches off in August: offices empty, deadlines freeze, nothing bad can happen until September. Half of that is true. The courts do largely stop. The tax office does not. An AEAT requerimiento (formal demand for information or documents) that lands in your electronic mailbox on 4 August is deemed served ten calendar days later whether you opened it or not, and the response clock starts while you are somewhere with no reason to check a Spanish government inbox.

There is an official fix, built into the AEAT’s own system, that blocks Hacienda from delivering notifications while you travel. It is called días de cortesía (courtesy days), it takes about ten minutes to set up, and almost nobody outside the gestoría profession seems to know it exists. For anyone planning to be away in early August, the window to use it is this week or next: the days must be requested at least seven calendar days before the first day you want blocked.

Last verified: 16 July 2026.

Why August does not protect you

The August pause is real, but it belongs to the courts, not the administration. Article 183 of the Ley Orgánica del Poder Judicial declares the days of August inhábiles (non-working) for judicial proceedings, with narrow exceptions for urgent matters. If you are in litigation, most procedural deadlines genuinely stop.

Administrative deadlines follow a different law. Under article 30.2 of Ley 39/2015, the law governing dealings with every Spanish public administration, deadlines counted in days exclude Saturdays, Sundays and official holidays, and nothing else. August days are ordinary working days for tax and administrative purposes. A ten-working-day deadline notified on 4 August expires in mid-August, exactly as it would in March.

This is the gap the courtesy-days mechanism was designed to close, and it is worth being precise about what is running underneath it.

The ten-day fuse

If you receive notifications electronically, whether because you are legally obliged to or because you signed up, delivery works like this under article 43.2 of Ley 39/2015: the administration deposits the notification in your electronic mailbox, and if ten calendar days pass without you opening it, it is deemed rejected and legally served. Calendar days, not working days. Weekends and holidays count.

From that moment the underlying deadline runs. A typical AEAT requerimiento gives ten working days to respond, counted from notification. So an unread demand deposited on 4 August is served on 14 August, and the response window can be gone before the end of the month. Miss it and the consequences escalate: for an information request, a first fine and a repeated demand; in a verification procedure, the risk that Hacienda resolves the matter with the information it has, without yours. The recovery options at that point are covered in our guide to missed government notifications, and none of them are as cheap as not missing the notification.

The fix: días de cortesía

Anyone in the AEAT’s electronic notification system can designate up to 30 days per calendar year during which the tax agency cannot place notifications at their disposal. The AEAT’s own sede confirms both numbers that matter:

• Up to 30 days in each calendar year can be blocked. They do not need to be consecutive, and weekends inside your blocked period count against the 30.
• The request must be made at least 7 calendar days before the first day you want blocked. To protect the first week of August, the request needs to be in by around 25 July.

During blocked days the AEAT simply does not deposit notifications in your mailbox. Whatever it was going to send waits until your courtesy period ends, and the ten-day fuse never starts. One important boundary: a notification deposited before your blocked period begins keeps its original ten-day clock. Courtesy days stop new deliveries; they do not pause deliveries already made, which is a good reason to clear the mailbox before you leave, not after you book.

How to request them

The service lives in the AEAT sede at sede.agenciatributaria.gob.es, under the electronic notifications section: the procedure is titled “Solicitud de días en los que no se pondrán notificaciones en la Dirección Electrónica Habilitada”, usually surfaced as días de cortesía. Signing in requires a certificado digital (digital certificate), DNIe or Cl@ve; there is no paper or in-person route.

Once in, the process is short: the system checks your subscription status and shows a calendar, you press Modificar, select the days you want (they mark in green), then Validar, then Firmar y Enviar, confirm with Conforme and sign once more. The system returns a receipt with a secure verification code and timestamp. Keep it; it is your proof if a notification is ever wrongly delivered inside a blocked period. Changes to a requested period are only possible up to seven days before it starts, so the selection is worth doing carefully the first time.

A gestor or other representative can manage this for you, but only if formally empowered for the notifications procedure through the AEAT’s apoderamiento system, with the empowerment confirmed. If your gestoría already handles your notifications, one email asking them to block your travel dates is the entire task.

Who this applies to

The mechanism covers everyone the AEAT notifies electronically, which is two groups:

• Obliged subscribers. Under article 14.2 of Ley 39/2015, companies (every SL and SA), entities without legal personality such as a comunidad de bienes, professionals in fields with compulsory professional-college membership acting in that capacity, and anyone representing an obliged party. If you run an SL, you are in this group whether you know it or not.
• Voluntary subscribers. Individuals, including most autónomos, are not automatically in the obligatory group, but many have opted in to electronic notifications or been enrolled through a gestor. For voluntary subscribers, courtesy days protect the procedures actually subscribed to.

If you are not sure which group you are in, log in to the sede and check, and while you are at it check DEHú, the state-wide notification mailbox, for anything already sitting unread. Our DEHú setup guide covers that system end to end.

What it does not cover

Courtesy days are an AEAT mechanism. They bind the state tax agency and nothing else. In particular:

• Seguridad Social has no equivalent. Autónomos have been obliged to receive TGSS notifications electronically through the SEDESS since October 2018 (Orden ESS/214/2018), on the same ten-calendar-day rule, and the regulation offers no mechanism to block delivery periods. Social Security notifications run all year.
• Other administrations keep notifying. Regional tax agencies, town halls, the DGT and every other body deposit into DEHú or their own systems on their own schedules.
• Notifications already deposited keep their clocks, as above.

The rest of the pre-travel checklist

Courtesy days close the biggest gap, the AEAT one, but a complete pre-travel setup for anyone with Spanish administrative exposure looks like this:

• Request días de cortesía for your travel dates, at least seven calendar days ahead.
• Open DEHú and the AEAT mailbox before leaving and deal with anything pending, since existing notifications are not paused.
• Confirm your email alerts are set in both DEHú and the SEDESS. The alerts have no legal weight, but they are the early-warning system for the agencies cortesía does not cover.
• For longer absences, consider empowering a trusted person or your gestoría (an apoderamiento) so someone with a digital certificate can open and answer notifications in your name.
• Note what falls due while you are away. Landlords and autónomos have third-quarter filings in October, but anything mid-cycle is easier to spot in July. Our Spanish tax deadlines guide has the calendar.
• If a notification has already expired unread, the recovery playbook is in the missed notification guide.

The five-minute version

• August is non-working for courts, not for the tax office. Administrative deadlines run all month (Ley 39/2015, art. 30.2).
• An unread electronic notification is legally served after ten calendar days (art. 43.2), and response deadlines run from there.
• Días de cortesía let anyone in the AEAT electronic notification system block up to 30 days per year from receiving new notifications.
• Request them in the AEAT sede with a digital certificate or Cl@ve, at least 7 calendar days before the first blocked day. For early August, that means this week or next.
• They cover the AEAT only. Seguridad Social and other bodies keep notifying, and anything already in your mailbox keeps its clock. Clear the inbox before you go.

Related guides

• DEHú Setup: Spain’s Digital Notification Mailbox
• Missed a Government Notification in Spain? The Recovery Playbook
• Spanish Tax Deadlines for Expats

General information, current as of July 2026, and not tax or legal advice. Primary sources: Ley 39/2015 (arts. 14, 30 and 43), Ley Orgánica del Poder Judicial (art. 183), Orden ESS/214/2018, and the AEAT sede’s official días de cortesía service pages. Rules and sede paths change; check the sede text before relying on it.