labor-law spain
Do weekends count as vacational days?
<p>Let's say I have 10 natural vacational days available and I'm going on vacation next week (Monday-Sunday).<br>
I always work from Monday to Friday; how many vacational days will I have left? Do weekends count as vacational days?</p>

<p>A vacation day is a day "off",that is a day that one is not working, <strong>that you would otherwise be working</strong>.</p>

<p>So, if you had a seasonal job as, say, a tour guide, from January 1 to June 1, any days "off" that you have in August are not vacation days as far as that tour guide job is concerned.</p>

<p>In your specific case, you normally work Monday to Friday and are vacationing Monday to Sunday. You will need to take five(5) vacation days, to cover Monday to Friday; Saturday and Sunday do not need vacation days, as you would have those days off to do as you'd like anyway.</p>

<p>Or to put it another way, if you had a short, two day vacation, where you left after work on Friday, and were back in time to start work Monday morning, you would not need to take any vacation time at all.</p>

<p>After seeing that you asked for "natural" days I checked your profile and yes, you are from Spain.</p>

<p><em>Natural days</em> (<em>días naturales</em>) are "days as they appear in the calendar". These include weekends and other holidays.</p>

<p><em>Work days</em> (<em>dias laborables</em>) are that, days that you would have had to work and you take off. Those do not include weekends or holidays.</p>

<p>Usually if you have "natural days" holidays you will get more free days that you would do if you have "work days" holidays. What you get will depend of what the agreements (<em>convenios</em>) your specific sector and business have (there are legal limits to these, and the agreements can always be improved -i.e. your boss can tell you that you have more days off-).</p>

<p>With work days, selecting holidays is usually pretty straightforward<sup>1</sup> and business usually are less strict.</p>

<p>With natural days rules are usually in place to avoid abuse (someone asking 5 days this week from monday to friday, getting "back to work" during the weekend and then asking a new 5 days holidays the next week). My experience is that, at the very minimum, you must ask full weeks as long as you have enough days (that is, if you do not work on weekends you spend 7 natural days to get 5 work days off). Again, the restrictions in how these days should be partitioned usually are part of the agreements or stablished by HR department.</p>

<p><hr/>
<sup>1</sup>There may still be issues if not all work days include the same account of hours, or other restrictions due to the need of hiring a replacement.</p>
