The Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León has ruled in favor of a 63-year-old woman to access total permanent disability for her usual profession as a domestic worker and cleaner due to suffering from fibromyalgia, herniated discs and a depressive condition. Although Social Security had denied her, the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León estimates that, given her limitations, she is prevented from working in her usual profession, so she will be entitled to an economic pension calculated on its regulatory basis, set at 581.06 euros per month.
The woman, born in 1962, worked as a building cleaner and domestic worker, but her health began to worsen. After a medical examination, the worker had fibromyalgia with 18 of 18 positive pain points, L1-L2 disc herniation, L3-S1 disc disease and chronic pain in the left side of the body. Added to this physical condition was a profound emotional deterioration as a result of her generalized pain, for which she was referred to psychiatry. As stated in the sentence, the woman suffers from “asthenia, hypothymia with feelings of frustration and helplessness, frequent crying, emotional lability, conciliation insomnia and premature awakening.”
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Due to this limiting situation, which kept her on prolonged medical leave, the worker requested Social Security to recognize her permanent disability in December 2022, but was denied. The INSS Disability Assessment Team (EVI) estimated that his injuries “did not reach a sufficient degree of decrease in his work capacity.” After the rejection of her previous administrative claim, the woman decided to take her case to court.
I was physically limited to work
Both the Social Court No. 1 of Ponferrada in the first instance, and later the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León, agreed with the worker and dismissed the appeal presented by the INSS and the General Treasury of Social Security. The Court understood that the pathologies suffered by the plaintiff affected her functional capacity to work, that is, it was impossible for her to do so under normal conditions.
To make this decision, the court assessed the high physical burden that their profession demands. The resolution details that their usual tasks involve “sweeping or cleaning with a vacuum cleaner, washing and waxing floors, furniture and other belongings, making beds (…) cleaning kitchens and helping with kitchen tasks such as washing dishes (…) and collecting garbage, emptying containers and taking their contents to the collection points.”
A key thing about this ruling is that Social Security tried to argue that the worker could continue cleaning despite fibromyalgia and alterations in her left side. Despite this, the magistrates explained that in these processes “we must start from the limitations that they represent in order to the development of work activity rather than from the pathologies.” That is, the state of health cannot be evaluated by looking only at the name of the disease, but rather at its real and joint impact.
The TSJ ends by saying that the worker “does not retain sufficient physical abilities to perform her profession as a cleaner and domestic worker” due to the functional deficits derived from an impairment that is both physical and psychological. Thus, Justice definitively recognizes his total permanent incapacity for his usual profession.