An ONCE worker has lost the possibility of being able to access early retirement due to disability despite having a recognized degree of 79% since 1990 and having more than 34 years and three months of contributions, that is, a total of 12,533 days and whose regulatory base would be 2,375.02 euros. The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands agrees with Social Security, since this worker requested the pension one year before the age at which he could retire early.
As explained in the ruling STSJ ICAN 4757/2025 (available in this Judicial Branch Liaison) the worker requested early retirement due to disability on November 24, 2022, setting February 22, 2023 as the retirement date. Despite this, the retirement was denied by Social Security. The reason is that he did not meet the minimum age required to access early retirement due to disability and because he did not prove the 35 years of contributions that were taken into account to calculate his ordinary retirement age. That is to say, he did not reject it just because of lack of contributions, but because, with those contributions, he was not yet old enough to retire early.
Now, the key to this ruling is how said age was calculated. Although the worker could reduce his retirement age by 8 years and one month due to his disability, the trial court understood that his ordinary age was 67 years as he did not reach 35 years of contributions (as regulated by Law 27/2011). Therefore, to retire early in this modality you had to be 58 years and 11 months on the date of the causative event, but this worker was only 57 years and 10 months. That is, he had requested retirement approximately one year before his actual age.
The worker appealed, defending that he had a degree of disability greater than 65% and that he had more than fulfilled the contribution time with that recognized disability. In his letter he explained that with that percentage he could access retirement sooner and that he met the necessary requirements.
He did not meet the requirements or the age
But the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands does not agree with him and this is where the second key piece appears to understand the sentence. The Chamber not only assumes that he did not meet the required age, but also considers that the appeal was poorly formulated. In fact, the court expressly says that “the plea is rejected due to defective formalization” and adds that the appellant “does not cite any rule as violated nor propose modification of the factual account.”
That is to say, the problem was more procedural than anything. The TSJ explains that in an appeal it is not enough to show disagreement with the sentence, since it is necessary to specify what rule has been violated, what proven fact one wants to modify, and what documentary or expert evidence supports that correction. Since this was not done correctly, the Chamber understands that it cannot reconstruct the appeal on its own.
The ruling explains that “the incorrect formalization of an appeal cannot be replaced by the Court.” With all this, it is necessary to know that in early retirement due to disability it is not enough to have a high degree of disability or many years of contributions. You must also reach the required age after applying the reducing coefficients.
Regarding this, it is worth clarifying that due to disability there are two ways to retire early, one at age 56 for those who have a degree of disability equal to or greater than 45%, regulated under Royal Decree 370/2023 and another for those workers who have a degree of disability equal to or greater than 65% (regulated under Royal Decree 1539/2003) that allows the age to be reduced to 52 years. This worker chose the latter where the age is progressively reduced under certain coefficients.