A Mercadona worker has managed to get the Superior Court of Justice of Asturias to agree with her to collect an absolute permanent disability pension with a regulatory base of 3,402.86 euros per month, despite the refusal of Social Security. Social Security claimed that his injuries were not enough and that there was an improvement in his mental state, but the court rejected this argument and maintained that he was not fit to work in any profession or trade.
According to the ruling STSJ AS 8/2025, it all begins when the worker, a plant coordinator at Mercadona, requests absolute permanent disability due to a common illness and, if this is not possible, a total permanent disability, which is denied by Social Security. The resolution letter explained that the pathologies he suffered did not cause a sufficient decrease in his work capacity.
Not satisfied, he went to court and the Social Court number 2 of Oviedo agreed with him. The lower court ruling declared that he was in a situation of absolute permanent disability and recognized his right to a pension equivalent to 100% of a regulatory base of 3,402.86 euros per month, with effect from May 19, 2023.
The clinical picture was extensive. The sentence states that he suffered from fibromyalgia, chronic migraine, mechanical low back pain, lumbar osteoarthritis with L4-L5-S1 discopathy, foraminal stenosis and a severe depressive disorder with autolytic ideation. In addition, she had required several admissions to the psychiatric hospitalization unit, had auditory and visual sensory-perceptive alterations, and was still included in the suicide risk prevention protocol.
Social Security claimed that it had improved
Social Security appealed the sentence when it understood that the worker had improved from her mental pathology. To do this, he relied on subsequent medical reports and maintained that there was a stabilization of the psychological illness. But the Superior Court of Justice of Asturias does not accept this interpretation.
The Chamber explains that this reduction in clinical intensity does not equate to a real recovery of work capacity. In fact, the sentence itself indicates that “it does not translate into an improvement in condition or recovery of work capacity,” since the mental health center continued to report a complicated evolution and without sufficient response to treatment.
The court recalls that permanent disability, according to the General Social Security Law, exists when the worker presents serious, objective and foreseeably definitive anatomical or functional reductions, which reduce or nullify his or her work capacity. Furthermore, it clarifies that the possibility of recovery does not prevent recognition of disability if that recovery is medically uncertain or only foreseeable in the long term.
In this case, the Chamber emphasizes that “we do not have medical information on the certain possibility of recovery in the medium or short term.” For this reason, it is understood that the worker, due to the diagnosis and symptoms of the mental illness she suffers, “is shown to be incapable of the necessary mastery of the work field, regardless of her environment.”
The ruling also highlights that any job requires minimum conditions of pace, effort, reasonable performance, diligence, professionalism and safety. And, taking into account the condition of the worker, it concludes that it cannot be expected that she can remain active at work.
For all these reasons, the Superior Court of Justice of Asturias rejects the Social Security appeal and confirms the absolute permanent disability recognized by the Social Court. This means that the worker maintains the right to collect a pension of 100% of her regulatory base, set at 3,402.86 euros per month.