A man retired due to permanent disability from the Civil Guard must return 5,232.75 euros of his pension to Social Security after combining it for two months with a job at Leroy Merlin and not having requested compatibility. Although the Administration ended up authorizing this same activity a year later, the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid considers that the request came too late, which is why it approves that the amounts improperly collected must be returned.
According to the ruling STSJ M 4187/2026 (which can be consulted in this Judicial Branch Liaison), it all starts on April 29, 2021. That day, the plaintiff, retired due to permanent disability in the Civil Guard, started working as a salesperson in a Leroy Merlin Spain store. The activity lasted until June 21, 2021, that is, two months during which he continued to receive his full Passive Classes pension without having requested compatibility.
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The Administration informed him and alleged that he called Passive Classes to announce the new job, but the offices were closed due to the pandemic and the officials worked from home, so no one came to assist him.
After checking, the Administration did not find any record of that call and, in April 2022, notified him of the obligation to refund the 5,232.75 euros corresponding to those two months declared incompatible. Not being satisfied with the decision, he went to court, until reaching the Contentious Chamber of the TSJ in Madrid.
The curious thing about this ruling is that in November 2022, while the procedure was still alive, the Administration itself issued a new resolution that declared this commercial activity in a DIY and gardening store compatible with the retirement pension. That is, the work could have been done legally, but by not notifying before, during, or immediately after, Social Security understood that this new resolution only covered the future and not the two months already consumed in 2021.
Requesting compatibility a year late does not protect pensions already collected
In court, he alleged that a previous ruling from the Supreme Court, issued in September 2022, established that it is not legal to start working before communicating it to the Administration. This doctrine considers that the authorization functions as a simple recognition that the requirements are met, not as a constitutive permit, and therefore admits that the declaration of compatibility can produce backward effects, until the moment in which the pensioner began the activity.
Regarding this, the TSJ of Madrid says that there is a limit and explains that the Supreme Court’s own ruling warned that communication cannot be delayed indefinitely and, much less, presented when the work has already finished. In this case, the request arrived on October 7, 2022, more than fifteen months after leaving Leroy Merlin, and the form included as a pending activity the generic “sales commercial” with an “undetermined” start date, without any reference to the period actually worked in 2021.
Therefore, neither that request nor the subsequent November resolution retroactively covered those two months, but only an activity to be started, so the claim for the 5,232.75 euros is confirmed, and must be returned as it was an improper charge, although Social Security will authorize it later.