The Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community has denied a retirement pension to a woman who overcame breast cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic, finding that she spent more than two years in a row without registering as a job seeker. Social Security rejected his pension because he only had 92 days of contributions in the last fifteen years, compared to the 730 days required by the norm to retire (specific deficiency), so he loses a pension of 674.78 euros per month despite having been recognized in the first instance with a career of contributions sufficient to collect 88% of the regulatory base (about 31 years of contributions).
According to the ruling STSJ CV 3922/2025 (can be consulted at this link from the Judiciary), everything begins when the worker is laid off on June 17, 2009. In February 2010, she registers as a job seeker with the SEPE and shortly after begins to receive the subsidy for those over 52 years of age, an aid that she received without interruption until January 2018.
Ana María, 66 years old, housewife: “No one has paid me a salary. If my husband wants to give me something for my expenses, I will have it. If not, I have nothing”
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Four years later, in May 2022, he submitted the application for contributory retirement to Social Security and it was denied. The reason is that in the 15 years prior to the causative event, the applicant barely had 92 days of contributions compared to the 730 required by law. This requirement is the specific deficiency and is regulated in article 205.b of the General Law of Social Security.
The interested party appealed the denial before the Social Court number 4 of Alicante, which in April 2024 agreed with her by applying what is known as the parenthesis doctrine. The lower court ruling calculated the pension on 88% of the regulatory base, a percentage that, according to the current calculation method of the General Social Security Law, is 31 years of contributions adding effective work and periods in which the SEPE contributes for the person during unemployment.
Since Social Security was not satisfied, he decided to appeal to the courts and took the case to the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community, which now corrects the court’s criteria and takes away the pension that had been recognized.
To understand this sentence it is convenient to explain what the parenthesis doctrine is. It is a construction created by the courts for cases in which the worker does not reach the so-called specific deficiency, that is, the two years of contributions within the last fifteen before retiring. The idea is to go back in time and deduct from the calculation those periods in which the person wanted to continue working but could not, so that those two years are searched in a previous window. It is applied with three accumulated conditions, a previous relevant work life, continued registration as a job seeker and the absence of long unjustified gaps.
The pandemic and cancer do not cover a gap of more than two years
The court admits that both the oncological disease and the pandemic could explain why the applicant did not comply with her obligation to remain registered as a job seeker during the cancer treatment and the months in which confinement kept the SEPE offices closed. However, when ordering the chronology, the magistrates detect three long stretches without cause to justify them.
Between June 2019 and the start of the pandemic in March 2020 there are nine months. Between the end of strict confinement in May 2020 and the diagnosis of cancer at the beginning of 2021, another ten pass. Between the end of the radiotherapy treatment in September 2021 and the new registration in March 2022, six more months pass.
In total, 908 continuous days without appearing as a job seeker, a figure that far exceeds the 24 months that the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court considers the admissible limit to maintain the status of being assimilated to registration in involuntary unemployment. For the magistrates, this prolonged vacuum shows that the real will to remain present in the labor market was not maintained. Without this proven will, the fifteen-year window cannot be extended back to search for older quotes and fill in the specific gap.
With this reasoning, the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community upholds the Social Security appeal and revokes the ruling of the Social Court, leaving the woman outside of the contributory pension despite having obtained recognition of the right in the instance. At this point, you would be left with the option of a non-contributory pension if you meet the financial requirements, or prepare an appeal for the unification of doctrine before the Supreme Court within a period of ten days from the notification. The pension that he permanently loses is around 9,447 euros per year if it is calculated on the fourteen usual contributory retirement payments.