Subsequent to Spain’s growing participation in international markets and its membership in the European Union, Spanish legislation regulating currency exchange and technology transfer controls has been liberalized, and restrictive policies have been replaced by policies intended to promote international transactions. Controls on transactions of this type no longer precede such operations but are instead carried out afterwards, focusing particularly on fiscal matters, in as much as returns declaring these transactions must be filed and the corresponding taxes paid.

Therefore, technology transfers should now be examined from the standpoint of competition law, and technology transfer agreements in the broad sense of the term (bearing on patents, know-how, franchising, etc.) may now be said to be subject to Spanish and European Union legislation governing restraint of competition.

Thus, attention can be drawn to the Spanish Defense of Competition Act, Spanish National Law 15/2007 of July 3, 2007. The Implementing Regulations to this law are set out in Royal Decree 261/2008 of February 22, 2008. As regards European Union Law, attention can be drawn to the "Block Exemption Regulations" (BER) issued pursuant to Article 101(3) TFEU, specifying the conditions under which certain types of agreements are exempted from the prohibition of restrictive agreements laid down in Article 101(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU): the "Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation" (TTBER - Commission Regulation (EU) No. 316/2014 of March 21, 2014 on the application of Article 101(3) of the TFEU to categories of technology transfer agreements); the "Vertical Block Exemption Regulation" (VBER - Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/720 of May 10, 2022 on the application of Article 101(3) of the TFEU to categories of vertical agreements and concerted practices); and the "Horizontal Block Exemption Regulations" (HBER), which consists of two Commission regulations that define certain research and development (Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1066 of June 1, 2023 on the application of Article 101(3) of the TFEU to certain categories of research and development agreements) and specialisation agreements (Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1067 of June 1, 2023 on the application of Article 101(3) of the TFEU to certain categories of specialisation agreements) that can be considered more beneficial than harmful and, if meet certain conditions, are exempted from Article 101(1) of the TFEU. Additionally, it shall be noted that the first Spanish Trade Secrets Act was approved in 2019 (1/2019 Act), devoting its Chapter III to trade secrets as subject matter of a property right, and its Articles 6 and 7 to the license and transfer of trade secrets.