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Typing tests in Spanish oposiciones: which ones still set one

Most of the Spanish typing-practice industry sells preparation for a typing test that the two largest national competitions no longer set. The 2025 convocatoria for the Cuerpo General Auxiliar del Estado is one exercise of multiple-choice questions, and the 2025 Justicia convocatoria replaced transcription with twenty questions about Windows and Office. Typing exercises have not disappeared; they have moved to the Cortes Generales and to autonomous and local competitions, each of which publishes its own bases. This guide sets out which is which, on the evidence of the notifications themselves, and explains the arithmetic those exercises are scored by, which is not the arithmetic most practice sites report.

Requirements

Spanish
50 words per minute, which is the 250 net keystrokes a minute the Cortes Generales convocatoria sets
Duration
10 min
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At a glance

Unit
Net keystrokes a minute (pulsaciones netas), not words a minute
Cortes Generales
250 net keystrokes a minute over 10 minutes, eliminatory
Penalty
Six keystrokes deducted for each wrong one
Error ceiling
2% of gross keystrokes, disqualifying on its own
Cuerpo General Auxiliar (2025)
No typing exercise; one multiple-choice exercise in two parts
Justicia (2025)
No typing exercise; Windows and Office questions instead

Figures checked September 2026. Exam formats are revised between cycles, so confirm against your own notification.

The exercise most preparation is sold against

Search for typing practice for Spanish public-sector competitions and almost every result frames it around the Auxiliar Administrativo del Estado, with a target somewhere between 250 and 350 keystrokes a minute. The framing is inherited rather than checked, and the notification does not support it. The December 2025 convocatoria for the Cuerpo General Auxiliar de la Administracion del Estado sets a single exercise in two parts: a questionnaire of up to sixty questions, then one of up to fifty, ninety minutes for both, multiple choice throughout with a third of a point deducted for a wrong answer. Office software appears in the syllabus as a subject to know about. There is no transcription exercise and no speed to reach. The Justicia competitions went the same way. The 2025 convocatoria for Tramitacion Procesal y Administrativa sets three exercises, the third of which is twenty multiple-choice questions about Windows 10 and 11 and Microsoft 365 in forty minutes. Auxilio Judicial has two exercises and no computer exercise at all. Both cuerpos once ran typing tests; a candidate preparing for one today is preparing for the wrong thing.

Where the typing exercises actually are

They are in the Cortes Generales, and they are in autonomous and local competitions. The Cortes Generales convocatoria for its Cuerpo Administrativo sets a second exercise, eliminatory, of ten minutes' transcription at a minimum of 250 net keystrokes a minute - 2,500 in total - followed by a second part working the transcribed text in Word and Excel. That is the clearest national example still standing, and it is quoted in full further down. The autonomous communities and the town halls are the larger group by volume, and they are the harder one to summarise, because each publishes its own bases in its own regional or provincial bulletin rather than in the national gazette. Figures between 200 and 280 keystrokes a minute are commonly reported for them. We have not read those bases, so we do not repeat those numbers as though we had; the only safe instruction is to read the ones for the post you are sitting.

Net keystrokes, and why the penalty changes everything

Spanish exercises are scored in keystrokes, not words, and a wrong keystroke costs far more than a right one earns. The Cortes Generales bases put it plainly: each erroneous keystroke penalises six, net is obtained by subtracting the penalties from the gross, and a candidate may be no more than two per cent wrong on the gross figure. Work an example. Ten minutes, 2,700 keystrokes typed, thirty of them wrong. The penalties come to 180, so the net is 2,520, which is 252 a minute - two points above a 250 threshold. A practice site that docks one keystroke per error reports 267, which is seventeen points of headroom that does not exist. The second rule is independent of the first. Two per cent of 2,700 is 54, so thirty errors is inside the ceiling; ninety would not be, and no amount of speed rescues it. Two candidates at the same net speed can be separated entirely by which side of that line they fall. The practical consequence is that accuracy is worth roughly six times what speed is worth, which is the opposite of how most people practise.

What this means for how you practise

Practise at the length of the exercise. Ten minutes measures endurance as much as speed, and accuracy falls in the last third; a candidate who trains in one-minute bursts has never met the part of the exercise that decides it. Practise on the layout your examination centre uses. Spanish and Latin American layouts are both ISO and both carry the enye beside the L, but they differ in where the at sign and the tilde sit, and the euro sign is reachable on one and not the other. An accent typed through a dead key is one visible character and two keystrokes, which is worth knowing before it surprises you. Use administrative prose rather than general text. The vocabulary of a resolution or a diligencia is not the vocabulary of a novel, and the words that slow candidates down are the ones they never practise. On Typetera the ten-minute Spanish test is the test to use, and Custom mode takes text from past exercises. The results page reports net keystrokes under the exam rule, so the number you practise against is the number you will be scored on.

How confident we are in each part of this

The speed, the penalty and the error ceiling come from the Cortes Generales convocatoria, which we read end to end. So does the description of its second exercise. That the Cuerpo General Auxiliar and the two Justicia cuerpos set no typing exercise comes from their own current notifications, also read directly. This is the part most likely to be read as a general claim, so to be exact: it is true of those cuerpos in those cycles, and earlier cycles of the same cuerpos did set typing exercises. What we have not done is read the bases of any autonomous or local competition. That is where most typing exercises now live, and it is the one part of this page that names no figure. If your competition is a town hall or a regional administration, this page can tell you what to look for and cannot tell you what you will find.

Tips that actually help

  • Read the technical clause before anything else

    The clause naming the exercises is several pages into the notification and it decides whether the rest of your preparation counts. Reading it first costs ten minutes and has saved candidates months.

  • Treat one error as six seconds lost

    At the six-keystroke penalty a single error costs roughly what a second and a half of typing earns. Slowing down enough to avoid two errors a minute is almost always a net gain, and it is the opposite of how speed practice usually feels.

  • Watch the error ceiling separately from the speed

    The two per cent limit disqualifies on its own. A candidate comfortably above the speed can still fail on it, so track the proportion of errors as a number in its own right rather than assuming a good speed implies a good one.

  • Run the full ten minutes, not fragments of it

    Accuracy drifts in the last third of a long exercise and that drift is what the threshold catches. Practising the whole length is the only way to find out where your own drift begins.

  • Practise in administrative register

    Type resolutions, notifications and minutes rather than general prose. The long formulaic words are the ones that cost time, and they are the ones a general corpus never makes you type.

  • Confirm which keyboard the centre provides

    Spanish and Latin American layouts move the at sign and the tilde and differ on the euro. Discovering that at the examination costs more than the difference in speed between the two.

What costs candidates marks

  • Preparing for the Auxiliar Administrativo typing test

    The current national convocatoria for that cuerpo has no typing exercise. Preparation aimed at it is aimed at something the notification does not contain, and the time would be better spent on the questionnaire it does set.

  • Reading a practice site's keystroke figure as the exam's

    Most sites deduct one keystroke per error. The competition deducts six. The same run produces two different numbers and only one of them is the one you will be scored on.

  • Assuming a national figure applies to a local competition

    Each administration sets its own speed and its own penalty. A figure quoted for the Cortes Generales says nothing reliable about a town hall competition advertised the same month.

  • Chasing speed while the error rate climbs

    Past a certain point every extra keystroke a minute costs more in penalties than it earns. Candidates who only watch the speed number often get slower in net terms while feeling faster.

  • Leaving the certificate or the layout to the last week

    Neither the keyboard layout nor the register of the text is something that can be absorbed quickly. Both are cheap to fix in month one and expensive to discover in the final week.

A four-week plan

  1. Week 1

    Establish the real baseline

    Take three full ten-minute Spanish tests and record net keystrokes under the exam rule rather than the raw figure. Note the error rate separately. Most candidates find their net speed is well below what they believed.

  2. Weeks 2-3

    Drive the error rate down first

    Type deliberately below your comfortable speed until the error rate sits under one per cent. At a six-keystroke penalty this raises the net figure faster than any speed work, and it is the change that survives exam nerves.

  3. Weeks 4-6

    Rebuild speed on top of accuracy

    Return to a pace that stretches you, but abandon any run whose error rate goes above one and a half per cent. Practise on administrative prose rather than general text so the vocabulary stops being the obstacle.

  4. Weeks 7-8

    Ten minutes, daily, under exam conditions

    One full-length run a day on the layout your centre uses, with no restarts. Watch where in the ten minutes your accuracy begins to drift and treat that point, not your peak speed, as the thing to improve.

Questions candidates ask

Does the Auxiliar Administrativo del Estado exam have a typing test?
Not in the current convocatoria. The December 2025 notification sets a single exercise in two multiple-choice parts over ninety minutes, with office software appearing only as a syllabus subject. Earlier cycles of the same cuerpo did set typing exercises, so confirm against the notification you are sitting rather than against this page.
Do the Justicia competitions still include transcription?
The 2025 convocatoria for Tramitacion Procesal y Administrativa sets three exercises, and the third is twenty multiple-choice questions on Windows and Microsoft 365 rather than a transcription. Auxilio Judicial has no computer exercise at all. Both once ran typing tests, which is why so much preparation material still describes one.
Which Spanish competitions do still set a typing exercise?
The Cortes Generales does, for its Cuerpo Administrativo, at 250 net keystrokes a minute over ten minutes. Beyond that they are mostly autonomous and local competitions, each publishing its own bases in its regional or provincial bulletin rather than in the national gazette.
What is the difference between gross and net keystrokes?
Gross is everything you typed. Net is what remains after the penalty for errors, which under the Cortes Generales rule is six keystrokes for each wrong one. Because most practice tools deduct one rather than six, the number they report is higher than the number the examination would give you for the same piece of typing.
How many errors am I allowed?
Where a ceiling is set it is expressed as a proportion of the gross figure, and the Cortes Generales bases put it at two per cent. That limit works independently of the speed, so a candidate can be fast enough and still be excluded by it. Confirm the proportion in your own bases, because not every competition sets the same one.
Can I practise for this on Typetera?
Yes. The ten-minute Spanish test matches the usual length, Custom mode takes text from past exercises, and the results page reports net keystrokes under the six-keystroke rule alongside the raw figures, so you can see the number the examination would actually award.
Does the keyboard layout make a difference to my score?
Not to how the typing is measured, because what is counted is the characters produced. It makes a considerable difference to how fast you produce them, since the Spanish and Latin American layouts place the at sign and the tilde differently and only one reaches the euro sign directly.
How recent are the figures on this page?
The speed and the penalty are from the 2020 Cortes Generales convocatoria and the statements about the other cuerpos are from their 2025 notifications, all read directly. Competitions are advertised on their own cycles, so treat any figure here as the shape of the requirement and read the bases for the post you are applying to.

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Common questions about this exam

Short, direct answers to what candidates ask most.

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Practice for another exam

Same locked 10-minute format, different exam corpus.