The Superior Court of Justice of Galicia has denied a contributory retirement pension to a 72-year-old worker who, after working for several years in Spain and France, had 55 days left to meet the generic deficiency. That is, having a minimum of 5,475 days, as required by article 205 of the General Social Security Law. He claimed to have a recognized disability of 67% and to have spent 15 years in prison.
According to the ruling STSJ GAL 1315/2026, the worker, born in 1949, requests a retirement pension from Social Security, proving 3,867 days of contributions in Spain and 1,553 days in France, but this was denied. The reason is that, on the one hand, she was not in a discharge situation or assimilated to discharge (she had not been working since March 2009) and did not reach the minimum generic waiting period.
It must be added that in the middle of this man’s working life he includes a hiatus of fifteen and a half years due to being in prison. During his prison stay he worked in the prison commissary between 1996 and 1997 as an employee of a subcontracted company, which generated contributions within the prison regime. In 2009, the Generalitat of Catalonia recognized a degree of disability of 67% and, a year later, a non-contributory disability pension. But none of these elements bring you closer to the 5,475 days you need.
The worker presented a previous claim, which was rejected, so he decided to take the Social Security to court, where the Social Court number 3 of A Coruña rejected his appeal. He tried to appeal to the TSJ of Galicia and they still did not agree with him.
Why the prescribed installments do not save the remaining 55 days
In the TSJ, the worker wanted the so-called “parenthesis doctrine” to be applied, that is, those years without contributions were “put in parentheses” (RETA periods in which he did not pay contributions and which were already prescribed), allowing the worker to comply with the requirements for access to the retirement pension.
In this sense, the TSJ points out that the problem is not whether or not he was in a situation assimilated to discharge. The problem is that he only had 5,420 days of contributions, and he needed 5,475, so he was missing 55 days.
“The contributions not paid and already prescribed do not count towards completing the waiting period that gives the right to a certain benefit”points out the Chamber, citing consolidated jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. The prescription of the debt means that Social Security can no longer demand payment, but it is not equivalent to having fulfilled the obligation. In the words of the court itself: “The unenforceability produced can never be equated with the exact fulfillment of the obligation; and, even less so, with the satisfaction of the prescribed right.”
The ruling also closes the door to invitation to paymentthe mechanism that allows a self-employed person to catch up with their contributions before being denied their pension. This resource only works when the worker has already covered the waiting period and what he needs is to be up to date. This is not the case here, since the lack itself is what is not met, and the prescribed contributions cannot fill that gap. For everything you will not be able to access the pension.