Practical guide · Last updated April 2026

Spanish allergen regulation for restaurants — what every operator in Spain needs to declare.

If you operate a restaurant, bar, café, hotel-restaurant or food truck in Spain, you are legally required to inform every customer about the presence of 14 EU-defined allergens in every dish you serve. This is not optional and the fines are real. This guide explains exactly what to do — in English.

Why this exists

The legal base is EU Regulation 1169/2011 on food information to consumers, transposed into Spanish law as Real Decreto 126/2015 for non-prepackaged food. The objective is straightforward: a customer who has a food allergy or intolerance must be able to know what is in the dish before ordering it.

In practice this means three things for any restaurant in Spain:

• You must keep an internal allergen matrix for every dish on your menu (and updated whenever you change the recipe).
• You must provide allergen information to the customer in a clearly accessible way (written or, in some cases, oral).
• Your staff must be trained to give correct allergen information when asked verbally.

The 14 allergens you must track

These are defined in Annex II of EU 1169/2011 and apply identically in Spain:

1. Cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut and their hybrids)
2. Crustaceans
3. Eggs
4. Fish
5. Peanuts
6. Soybeans
7. Milk (including lactose)
8. Nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecan, Brazil, pistachio, macadamia)
9. Celery
10. Mustard
11. Sesame seeds
12. Sulphur dioxide and sulphites (above 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/L)
13. Lupin
14. Molluscs

Written vs oral information

RD 126/2015 allows you to provide allergen information either in writing (printed menu, digital menu, separate allergen card) or orally. If you choose oral, two conditions apply:

• You must clearly indicate at the point of sale (e.g. on the menu cover) that allergen information is available on request.
• You must keep an internal written record from which the staff can give that oral information accurately.

In practice, the safest and lowest-friction option is to display the information in writing, ideally next to each dish. A QR digital menu is the simplest way to do this without reprinting paper menus every time you change a recipe.

Fines and enforcement

The General Health Law (Ley 14/1986) and the Consumer Protection Law (RD-Leg 1/2007) classify allergen-information failures as administrative offences:

• Minor: up to €3.005 — typically partial information or unclear menu indication.
• Serious: up to €15.025 — recurring failure or no information at all when requested.
• Very serious: up to €601.012 — when the failure causes harm to health.

Enforcement is led by autonomous-community health authorities (e.g. Salud Pública in your CCAA) and by consumer-protection agencies (OCU and similar). Routine inspections happen typically once every 1-2 years for an active restaurant; targeted inspections happen after a customer complaint.

A practical compliance checklist

1. Build an allergen matrix for every dish: rows = dishes, columns = the 14 EU allergens, plus a column for “may contain traces”.
2. Decide your information format (written next to each dish — recommended — or oral with a clear notice on the menu).
3. Train every front-of-house staff member to give the oral version correctly. Document the training (sign-off matters in an inspection).
4. Update the matrix whenever you change a recipe, supplier or substitute an ingredient.
5. Do not hand-over an allergen list verbally with “I think it does not contain…” — under doubt, say so explicitly. Spain’s case-law is strict on negligent reassurance.
6. Keep the supplier ingredient sheets on file for two years (some inspectors request them).

How a digital QR menu helps

A QR digital menu like AppCarta covers RD 126/2015 with three properties:

• Each dish is tagged with the relevant allergens. The customer sees the icons next to the dish without asking.
• Customers can filter the menu by allergen (“hide everything that contains gluten”) — far better UX than reading a 14-column allergen sheet.
• Updates are instant: change the recipe at 11am, the menu reflects it at 11:01am. No reprint cost.

Multilingual support also matters: a tourist with a peanut allergy may not read the Spanish word cacahuete. Showing the allergen in their own language reduces risk.

Sources

• EU Regulation 1169/2011 — full text
• RD 126/2015 (BOE) — Spanish transposition for non-prepackaged food
• AESAN — Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition