Early retirement in Spain continues to leave much to be desired as far as pension compensation is concerned and if they don’t tell ASJUBI association retireeswho do not stop denouncing cases of disproportionate reductions.
And you have to know that in most cases early retirement carries a penalty with it (in this table you can consult the penalties in 2026), but in some specific cases this reduction can become excessive if we look at the years of contributions of the affected person. As in the case of Alfredo Fernández, an 87-year-old retiree who, with 49 years of contributions, has lost a good part of his pension due to a large penalty.
The retiree has publicly denounced the permanent reduction he suffers in his pension after retiring early at age 61. Through the ‘Letters to the Director’ section of the portal for seniors ’65 and More’, Alfredo has explained his case, announcing that he has been receiving a pension penalized by 28% for more than 26 years.
As he details in his story, he started contributing to Social Security when he was 14 years old, exactly the day he reached that age. Since then he accumulated an extensive professional career that ended unexpectedly when an employment regulation file (ERE) forced him to leave his position. “I retired, forcibly, because of an unfair but not illegal ERE,” he explains.
After spending two years unemployed, he chose to retire when he turned 61. This decision involved advancing the ordinary retirement age by four years, which meant assuming a 28% penalty on its regulatory base, a reduction that, according to the complaint, is applied permanently to its pension.
“It is equivalent to eight years when I only advanced four”
For the pensioner, the cut applied in his case is excessive. “The penalty is very unfair for those of us who have had many years of contributions. It is equivalent to eight years when I only advanced four,” he states in his letter.
Alfredo explains that, if the 45 years, 3 months and 18 days of contributions that appear in his working life are taken into account, in addition to the two years of unemployment (which also count) and the period of military service, it exceeds 48.5 annual contributions. “Very few people will reach that sum,” he points out.
Criticisms of the current system
In his opinion, the current system does not differentiate enough between those who have developed very long careers and those who have contributed for a shorter time. “My goal is to educate the population about the injustice that I have been suffering for years,” he writes.
For Alfredo, the economic context that has been experienced lately also matters. He remembers that in 2025 a record for Social Security affiliation was reached and that the Spanish economy led growth in Europe, figures that, in his opinion, should be taken into account when reviewing this type of penalties applied to early retirement.