A Spanish woman was refused her old-age contributory pension despite having more than 21 years of Social Security contributions. The reason was not the lack of an overall contributory career, but rather the failure to comply with the so-called specific deficiency, a legal requirement that is usually only “discovered” when the time comes to request retirement.
According to Noticias Trabajo, a Spanish website specializing in legal and labor matters, the case dates back to 2022, the year in which the worker submitted her pension request.
Although he met the general grace period of having at least 15 years of contributions throughout his working life, he failed in the second criterion required by Spanish law: having at least two years of contributions (730 days) in the 15 years immediately preceding the request.
A detail that made all the difference
Spanish legislation (General Social Security Law) requires that, in addition to the minimum 15 years of contributions, at least two years are concentrated in the most recent period. In this specific case, the worker had 651 days in that interval, leaving 79 days left to meet the requirement.
According to the same source, the global record indicated 7,957 days, including equivalent periods for the care of minors (the so-called “fictitious contributions”, referred to by the Spanish press as 270 days for each child, for a total of 540 days). Still, the decisive point was not the global total, but the failure to comply with the “recent” requirement imposed by the specific deficiency.
A long period without discounts or unemployment registration
The element that ended up weighing on the process was a prolonged hiatus: between May 30, 1994 and September 11, 2001, the worker did not make discounts nor was she registered as a job seeker, according to the published piece. This interval contributed to the failure to meet the specific waiting period required to access the pension.
The refusal was challenged and the case went to court. According to , previous instances confirmed the administrative decision and, in the outcome reported by the same source, the Supreme Court maintained the refusal.
The Supreme Court and the “doctrine of parenthesis”
In court, the defense tried to invoke the so-called “doctrine of parenthesis”, a line of jurisprudence used in Spain to discuss whether certain periods without discounts, when they result from involuntary and proven circumstances, may not prejudice the fulfillment of the specific deficiency.
According to the published explanation, the Supreme Court did not accept this reading in the specific case, considering that the period without discounts was too long and, above all, because it had not been demonstrated that the interruption of activity was involuntary or imposed by external circumstances.
The case serves as a warning: in Spain, it is not enough to have many years of discounts “in total”. If contributions are missing in the legally required range before the request, the contributory pension may be refused, even with more than two decades of contributory career.
The news also states that the worker will be able to request the pension again in the future if, in the meantime, she manages to meet the requirements set out in the law.
And in Portugal?
In Portugal, the logic is not the same. In the general Social Security regime, the old-age pension is based, as a rule, on compliance with the guarantee period: that is, having 15 calendar years, consecutive or interpolated, with a record of remuneration, as stated in article 19 of Decree-Law no. 187/2007 (Diário da República).
In the same sense, the official Social Security portal summarizes the requirement as having “at least 15 calendar years of salary records” for the old-age pension.
This means that, unlike the Spanish regime described in this case, Portuguese law does not provide, for the contributory old-age pension, a general rule equivalent to the specific grace period of “2 years in the last 15”.
Even so, in other benefits and in some special regimes there may be specific requirements and additional conditions: therefore, in cases with very irregular careers, confirmation with Social Security remains prudent before formalizing the request.
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