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A woman will not have to return the 17,099 euros that the State Public Employment Service (SEPE) demanded from her for collecting the subsidy for those over 52 years of age when at the same time she was collecting a permanent disability. The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands agrees with the charity because the ruling was from the SEPE and not from it.
The worker requested the subsidy for those over 52 years of age in November 2020, explaining that she was already receiving a total permanent disability pension for which she received 611.56 euros per month. Even so, the SEPE approved it according to a Social Security certificate in which it said that it met the requirements, so that it continued to collect during the years 2022 and 2023.
He loses the subsidy for those over 52 years of age and must return 5,423.04 euros to the SEPE for not reporting that he earned 17,010.98 euros
Aid for people over 60 who have not contributed in 2026
The problem comes in March 2023, when Social Security changes its criteria and says that the contributions that had already been used to grant the disability could not be counted again for the subsidy, in such a way that it did not meet the generic deficiency, that is, having a minimum of 15 years of contributions.
Despite this error, the SEPE renewed the subsidy for unemployed people over 52 years of age in such a way that it collected a total of 22,882.10 euros between 2020 and 2024. Upon realizing all this, the SEPE suspended the pension and claimed the amounts improperly collected, making a total of 17,099 euros.
The error was from the SEPE
It was SEPE itself who went to court to revoke the resolutions and demand repayment. The Social Court ruled in favor of the woman, annulling the need to return money. The SEPE appealed to the TSJ alleging that the judge had applied a doctrine that the worker had not requested, something that, in its opinion, caused her to be defenseless.
The TSJ rejects this and explains that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is part of the Spanish legal system by mandate of the Constitution. That is why he applied the well-known Cakarevic doctrine, which says that “errors attributable exclusively to state authorities should not be remedied, in principle, at the expense of the affected person”, a criterion that the Supreme Court has already assumed.
The Court ends by saying that there was no improper charge for three reasons. First, that the subsidy “meets basic subsistence needs.” Second, that the amounts were modest and were used for vital expenses. And third, that the error is exclusively attributable to SEPE, “without fraud, data alteration or bad faith on the part of the beneficiary.”
With this pronouncement, which collides head-on with the article 55 of the General Law of Social Security Regarding the reimbursement of undue benefits, the court annuls the debt and confirms that the woman does not have to return anything. Against the sentence there is still cassation appeal for the unification of doctrine.