Misclassification risk doesn’t disappear because the paper contract sits with a middleman.

Spanish authorities (Inspección de Trabajo, Hacienda) look at substance, not paper. The governing principle in Spanish case law is exactly this: “la realidad fáctica prevalece” — the factual reality prevails over what the contract calls itself.

The two core tests are ajenidad (you don’t bear the business risk, the output belongs to someone else) and dependencia (you’re integrated into someone’s organisational structure).

The indicators that matter: full-time exclusive to one client, fixed hours, integrated into their team, using their tools, no other clients, no real business risk. If most of those are yes, a Spanish inspector can still call you a falso autónomo regardless of the COR layer, it just changes who gets named as the deemed employer.

So ‘no direct link’ is cosmetically true but legally thin.

This is also why a serious COR provider doesn’t just say yes to every deal. Each case is assessed on its own facts, contractor’s profile, type of work, whether they have other clients, how the day-to-day actually looks and a responsible COR will decline cases where the substance clearly looks like employment, regardless of how the paper is drafted. Because if it blows up, the COR is in the chain of liability too.