Social Security

General Information:

The Agreement applies to the following:

For Spain

To the following contributive benefits from the Social Security System, except for the schemes for public civil servants and the military:

• Benefits for temporary disability due to common illnesses and non-work-related injuries
• Benefits for maternity and risk during pregnancy
• Benefits for permanent disability, retirement, death and survival
• Family benefit for dependent children
• Benefits for work-related injuries and occupational disease

For the Dominican Republic

To the legislation for the Dominican Social Security System and the special laws governing Social Security and public pension and retirement plans for:

• Pensions and retirement
• Benefits for old age, total and partial disability
• Benefits for giving up work due to extreme old age
• Benefits for survival
• Benefits for illness, maternity and breastfeeding
• Services for the hospitalisation of infants

For these benefits, you must be aware that:

• To get the contributive benefits included in the Agreement, periods of insurance fulfilled in Spain and the Dominican Republic can be added together, if necessary and if they do not overlap.
• Economic benefits can be collected regardless of whether the interested party is resident or is currently in Spain or the Dominican Republic.

However, benefits for temporary disability and non-contributive benefits will not be paid when the recipient is resident in the other country.

• Each country pays its own benefits directly to the recipient. However, if the amount corresponding to similar benefit payments is higher than that owed by the Social Security of the other country, it can be deducted from the first payments of the pension granted.
• Those who meet the requirements of the legislation of both countries to be entitled to a contributive pension can collect it from both.

Temporary disability due to common illnesses and non-work-related injuries, maternity and risk during pregnancy.

The economic benefits for these contingencies will be granted by the Institution of the country whose legislation is applicable to the worker.

For entitlement to these benefits, the periods of insurance in both countries are added together, where appropriate, as long as they do not overlap. 

Permanent disability, retirement and survival

Each country will examine each application for benefits separately in the following way:

• It will check whether the interested party is entitled to the benefit, taking into account only its own periods of insurance, not those of the other country.

• Likewise, the benefit will be calculated by adding together its own periods of insurance and those of the other country (theoretical pension). In this case, the benefit will not be for the whole amount but a proportion of the periods of insurance in the country granting it and the sum of the periods for Spain and the Dominican Republic (prorated pension).

There is an exception for cases in which the total length of  the periods of accredited insurance in one of the two countries is less than one year and therefore there is no entitlement to a pension from that country. This period will be accepted by the other country as being its own period, but without applying the “prorrata temporis” clause

If the periods of accredited insurance in both of the countries is less than one year, they will be added together by the country where the interested party meets the requirements for being granted a pension. If the worker is entitled to a benefit in both countries, this will only be granted by the country in which the worker was last insured. In neither of these cases will the “prorrata temporis” clause be applied.

• The benefits calculated as shown in the previous sections will be compared and each country will recognise and pay the benefit that is most favourable to the interested party.

To recognise and calculate the pension, the following will be taken into account:

• If the legislation of one of the countries requires a maximum length of periods of insurance for a complete benefit to be recognised, when adding them up, the competent Institution in that country will take into account only the contribution periods in the other country needed to give entitlement to that pension.

• If, when adding up the periods, there are voluntary periods of insurance that overlap with obligatory insurance periods, both the theoretical pension and the amount of the economic benefit will be calculated without taking into account the voluntary periods of insurance.

However, the resulting amount will increase in proportion to the voluntary periods of insurance that were not calculated. This increase will be calculated according to the terms of the legislation of the country in which the voluntary periods of insurance were paid.

• The Institution that calculates the pension will consider the worker to be subject to its legislation, if that person is insured in the other country or is receiving a benefit from that country based on their own periods of insurance. To grant survival pensions, the fact that the deceased was insured or was a pensioner in accordance with the legislation of the other country will be taken into account.

• If, for a benefit to be recognised, it is a requirement that some periods of insurance have been accrued before the causal event of said benefit, this requirement will be considered to have been met if the interested party can prove that the insurance periods were in the period immediately prior to the recognition of the benefit by the other country .

• If the legislation of one of the signatory countries contains pension reduction, suspension or cancellation clauses for pensioners who work, these will be applicable even if the work was carried out in the other country.

• If for a Spanish pension to be recognised it was necessary to add in periods of insurance in the Dominican Republic, this pension will be calculated using the actual contribution bases of the insured person paid in Spain for the years immediately prior to the final contribution made to the Spanish Social Security. The amount obtained from this calculation will be increased by the annual revaluations made for the same type of benefit up to the date of the causal event.

• To receive benefits in certain special schemes (for example, Sea Workers and Domestic Employees) only the periods in the other country that were spent in the same profession or employment will be taken into account.

Specific resolutions in the legislation of the Dominican Republic

• To calculate the pension of a worker affiliated to the individual capitalisation scheme, the accumulated fund at the time of retirement will be used as the base.

This person will be entitled to a minimum pension when the sum of the Dominican and Spanish pensions is less than the minimum pension and the sum of the contributions made in both countries is equal to or more than the minimum required, if they do not overlap.

• The pension for a worker affiliated to the distribution scheme is calculated based on the number of contributions made, the total of these contributions and the average contributable salary or wage updated in accordance with the consumer price index.

To determine whether the interested party has entitlement, the contributions made by this person in both of the countries will be added together, as long as they do not overlap.
 
Work-related injury and occupational disease

The benefit will be determined by the country whose legislation the worker is subject to on the date when the accident occurred or the disease was contracted.