Is 250 keystrokes a minute the standard requirement?

It is the requirement in the one national notification we verified, for the Cortes Generales Cuerpo Administrativo. It is not a standard, because there is no body that sets one across Spanish public administration; every convocatoria decides its own and publishes it in its own bases.

Where do the 300 and 350 figures come from?

Mostly from preparation sites quoting each other rather than a notification, and often attached to competitions that no longer set a typing exercise. Some local competitions may genuinely ask for figures in that range, but a number without a convocatoria behind it is not something to plan months around.

How do I find the figure for my own competition?

Open the bases for the process, not the announcement of it, and find the section listing the exercises. For a town hall or a regional body that document is usually in the provincial or autonomous bulletin rather than the national one, and it is where the speed, the penalty and the error ceiling are all stated together.

Is the figure gross or net?

Net, in every set of bases we have read. That distinction matters more than the number itself, because a tool reporting one deduction per error will show you a figure well above the one the exercise would award you for the same piece of typing.

Does the duration change what speed I need?

It does not change the threshold, which is expressed per minute, but it changes how hard the threshold is to hold. Accuracy tends to drift after the first several minutes, so a ten-minute exercise at a given speed is a considerably harder thing than a one-minute test at the same speed.

Can I convert words per minute into keystrokes?

Roughly, by multiplying by five, since a standard word is counted as five characters. It is a reasonable way to translate a familiar number into an unfamiliar one, but it will not account for the error penalty, which is where the two measures genuinely diverge.

ANSWER

How many keystrokes a minute do Spanish oposiciones ask for?

There is no single figure, and any page that gives you one without naming a competition is guessing. The one national exercise we could verify is the Cortes Generales, at 250 net keystrokes a minute over ten minutes. The Cuerpo General Auxiliar and the Justicia cuerpos set no typing exercise at all in their current notifications. Autonomous and local competitions set their own, publish them in their own bulletins, and are the reason a single number cannot be honest.

What each competition sets →

Why the question has no single answer

Each administration convokes its own competitions and writes its own bases. A speed set by one says nothing binding about another advertised the same month, and the national gazette carries only the notice for most local processes, with the detail appearing in a provincial or regional bulletin. So the ranges you see quoted - 250 to 350, or 200 to 280 - are averages across a set nobody has enumerated. They are not wrong so much as unusable: the only number that matters to you is the one in your own bases, and it is a single sentence in a document you can read. That sentence is worth finding before anything else. It also tells you the penalty and the maximum proportion of errors, which change what the speed means.

What we could verify

The Cortes Generales notification for its Cuerpo Administrativo sets a second exercise, eliminatory, of ten minutes at a minimum of 250 net keystrokes a minute, with each error penalised six and a ceiling of two per cent errors on the gross figure. We read that one end to end and it is quoted on the guide to that exercise. We also read the two large competitions that most preparation material still attaches typing figures to, and neither sets one. The Cuerpo General Auxiliar de la Administracion del Estado has a single multiple-choice exercise in two parts. Tramitacion Procesal y Administrativa replaced its transcription with twenty questions about Windows and Office, and Auxilio Judicial has no computer exercise. What we did not do is read any autonomous or local bases. That is where most surviving exercises are, and it is why this page names no figure for them.

The number is net, which changes what it means

Whatever figure your bases give, it is almost certainly expressed in net keystrokes, and net is not what a typing site reports. Under the rule we could verify, each wrong keystroke removes six from the total. So a threshold of 250 net is not 250 of anything you can watch while typing: at a one per cent error rate you need about 266 gross a minute to reach it, and at two per cent about 284. The useful move is to convert the threshold into a gross target using your own error rate, and to practise against that. How net keystrokes are calculated works the arithmetic through with an example.

What to do with a figure once you have it

Read three things out of the bases, not one: the speed, the penalty per error and the maximum proportion of errors. The second and third are what decide how much raw speed the first actually requires. Then practise at the length of the exercise rather than in short bursts, in Spanish, on the keyboard layout your centre provides. Ten-minute exercises are decided in their last third, where accuracy drifts, and a candidate who only runs one-minute tests has never seen that happen to them. On the Spanish test the ten-minute duration matches most exercises, and the results page reports net keystrokes under the six-keystroke rule alongside the raw figures, so you can compare like with like.

Frequently asked questions

Is 250 keystrokes a minute the standard requirement?
+
It is the requirement in the one national notification we verified, for the Cortes Generales Cuerpo Administrativo. It is not a standard, because there is no body that sets one across Spanish public administration; every convocatoria decides its own and publishes it in its own bases.
Where do the 300 and 350 figures come from?
+
Mostly from preparation sites quoting each other rather than a notification, and often attached to competitions that no longer set a typing exercise. Some local competitions may genuinely ask for figures in that range, but a number without a convocatoria behind it is not something to plan months around.
How do I find the figure for my own competition?
+
Open the bases for the process, not the announcement of it, and find the section listing the exercises. For a town hall or a regional body that document is usually in the provincial or autonomous bulletin rather than the national one, and it is where the speed, the penalty and the error ceiling are all stated together.
Is the figure gross or net?
+
Net, in every set of bases we have read. That distinction matters more than the number itself, because a tool reporting one deduction per error will show you a figure well above the one the exercise would award you for the same piece of typing.
Does the duration change what speed I need?
+
It does not change the threshold, which is expressed per minute, but it changes how hard the threshold is to hold. Accuracy tends to drift after the first several minutes, so a ten-minute exercise at a given speed is a considerably harder thing than a one-minute test at the same speed.
Can I convert words per minute into keystrokes?
+
Roughly, by multiplying by five, since a standard word is counted as five characters. It is a reasonable way to translate a familiar number into an unfamiliar one, but it will not account for the error penalty, which is where the two measures genuinely diverge.

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