Spain's PRTR register: what it is, who must report and when the deadline falls

Spain's State Register of Emissions and Pollutant Sources, known as PRTR-España, is the public database where industrial facilities report each year how much they have released to air, water and soil, and how much waste they have sent off site. The report is filed in the first months of the year with data for the previous calendar year and, in most of Spain's autonomous communities, the deadline is the last day of February. If your plant falls within the register's scope, the next campaign is 2027, covering 2026 data, and it pays to start preparing before the year ends.

What PRTR-España is and where it comes from

PRTR stands for Pollutant Release and Transfer Register. The system rests on three layers of regulation:

• International: the Kyiv Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers, linked to the Aarhus Convention on access to environmental information.
• European: Regulation (EC) No 166/2006, which created the European E-PRTR.
• Spanish: Royal Decree 508/2007, which sets out which facilities must report and what data they must provide, amended among others by Royal Decree 102/2011 and Royal Decree 815/2013.

The register is managed by Spain's Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), while the autonomous communities act as competent authorities that receive and validate each facility's data. Once validated, the information is published at prtr-es.es, where anyone can search it by facility, sector, pollutant or municipality.

That public nature is what matters most for a business: the data you report can be seen by regulators, neighbours, environmental organisations and your customers.

Who must report

The obligation falls on operators of industrial complexes that carry out any of the activities in Annex I of Royal Decree 508/2007 above the capacity thresholds set in that annex. They include, for example:

• Combustion and energy installations.
• Production and processing of metals.
• Mineral industry: cement, lime, glass or ceramics.
• Chemical industry.
• Waste management and urban wastewater treatment.
• Paper manufacturing and wood treatment.
• Textiles and tanning.
• Food and drink industry and intensive livestock farming.
• Surface treatment using organic solvents.

The annex also covers other activities outside the integrated environmental permit regime, such as some mining operations and intensive aquaculture.

The criterion is the facility's capacity, regardless of the size of the company. An SME with a single plant above the threshold for its activity has the same obligation as a large industrial group. Each complex registers when it starts operating and receives a PRTR identification number that it keeps from one campaign to the next.

What has to be reported

The annual report covers four blocks of information:

• Releases to air, water and soil of the pollutants in Annex II of the royal decree, in kilograms per year. This includes routine and accidental releases, as well as diffuse and fugitive emissions.
• Off-site transfers of waste, hazardous and non-hazardous, in tonnes per year, together with the recovery (R) or disposal (D) operation they are sent to.
• Off-site transfers of pollutants in wastewater sent to an external treatment plant.
• Activity data for the complex: production volume and consumption of water, electricity and fuels.

Every release or transfer figure carries a code indicating how it was obtained: measured (M), calculated (C) or estimated (E). We explain how to choose between the three in our guide on how to prepare the PRTR report.

Some reference thresholds from the European register:

Item	Threshold
CO2 releases to air	100,000 tonnes per year
Transfers of hazardous waste	2 tonnes per year
Transfers of non-hazardous waste	2,000 tonnes per year

A note on waste: according to the support guide published by the Andalusian regional government, in Spain all waste transfers must be reported, and these thresholds only determine which information is then passed on to the European register.

Deadlines: when the report is due

Royal Decree 508/2007 sets the administrative timetable: the autonomous communities send validated data to the Ministry before 30 June, and the Ministry publishes it before 15 November. The deadline for companies is set by each autonomous community. In the 2026 campaign it looked like this:

Scope	Deadline for the operator
General deadline in most autonomous communities	28 February
Castilla-La Mancha and Catalonia	31 March
Livestock farms in Catalonia	1 to 30 April, extended to 11 May in 2026

Most autonomous communities use the PRTR-España platform directly, while others, such as Andalusia or the Basque Country, run their own procedure. Since deadlines can change from one campaign to the next, check them every year on your region's e-government portal.

On the national platform, the report can be finalised manually before the deadline or it closes automatically when the deadline passes. Once completed, the contact person receives a notification certificate by email summarising the data reported.

What happens if you don't report, or report incorrectly

Failing to file on time is a sanctionable infringement under Spain's integrated pollution prevention and control legislation. The risk goes beyond the penalty, though. The regional authority cross-checks what you report against other sources, such as continuous monitoring, self-monitoring reports, inspections and waste managers' records. If the figures don't match, information requests follow. And if an incorrect figure gets published, it stays visible to anyone who consults the register.

How PRTR connects to your other environmental obligations

PRTR data overlaps with other filings you probably already handle: the annual report on hazardous waste, self-monitoring reports under the integrated environmental permit, emissions monitoring under the EU Emissions Trading System, and the calculation of scope 1 emissions in your carbon footprint. Keeping figures consistent across all of these is what makes a report hold up under review.

The register is also about to change. Regulation (EU) 2024/1244 replaces the E-PRTR with the Industrial Emissions Portal and adds the use of energy, water and raw materials. We cover it in detail in what changes with Regulation (EU) 2024/1244.

Frequently asked questions

Does an SME have to report to the PRTR?

Yes, if its facility carries out an Annex I activity of Royal Decree 508/2007 above the capacity threshold. Company size makes no difference.

Which year is reported in each campaign?

The previous calendar year. The 2027 campaign covers data from January to December 2026.

Where can the published data be consulted?

At prtr-es.es, the register's portal managed by MITECO, and at European level on the European Environment Agency's industrial emissions portal.

Is the PRTR report the same as the annual waste report?

They are separate filings, each with its own deadlines and formats. They share part of the waste data, so the figures should match.

What is the deadline in my region?

In most regions, the last day of February. In Castilla-La Mancha and Catalonia it runs to 31 March, and Catalan livestock farms report in April. Check it every year on your region's e-government portal.

If your consumption, waste and emissions data is scattered across invoices, waste manager documents and spreadsheets, Manglai brings it together by facility: it reads energy and fuel invoices, classifies waste by LER code and calculates CO2 with documented emission factors. See how in our carbon footprint and waste management solutions.