Clasificación Nacional de Actividades Económicas
Spain’s national classification of economic activities, maintained by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE). CNAE 2025 is derived from NACE Rev. 2.1 but deliberately diverges: twelve NACE classes are split into twenty-four more specific Spanish ones, and one class has no NACE counterpart at all.
How a CNAE code is built
Each digit narrows the activity from the broadest sector down to a specific national industry. Here's how 01.11 decomposes:
Structure at a glance
Browse sections
History
CNAE has tracked the European standard since CNAE-93, through CNAE-2009. The 2025 edition was triggered directly by the EU’s adoption of NACE Rev. 2.1, but INE took the opportunity to split classes where Spanish industry needed finer detail — separating olive oil production from other oils, for instance, and residential from non-residential construction.
Usage & importance
Used by INE, the Spanish Social Security administration and the Registro Mercantil. Conversions to NACE are exact for most classes; where Spain split a NACE class, the Spanish codes are recorded as sitting inside their NACE parent rather than equal to it.
Revision timeline
Convert CNAE codes to any other system
Verified crosswalks between CNAE and the other sixteen systems, both sides clickable.