Social Security

Beneficiaries

Workers who meet the following requirements may apply for early retirement:

 1) .- Having  an actual age of 61. To this end, the age allowances that workers in some occupational categories can receive because of having arduous, toxic, dangerous or unhealthy jobs will not be applicable. 

2) .-  Accrediting a minimum effective contribution period of:

• 30 years (the period of compulsory military service or replacement social service will be counted as having made contributions for up to a maximum limit of one year) without taking into account, for these purposes, the proportional amount of the extra payments or the payment of years and days of contributions for contributions prior to 1 January 1967.

• At least two years of the contribution period must have been within the 15 years immediately prior to earning the entitlement or at the moment when the contribution obligation terminated, if the early retirement pension is applied while on active contributor status or as an assimilated contributor without the requirement to pay contributions.

In the case of workers included in Special System for Employed Agricultural Workers, for the purposes of accrediting the minimum period of effective contributions (30 years), it is a requirement for at least 6 of the last 10 years of contributions to correspond to periods of effective work in this special system. To this end, periods of collecting contributory unemployment benefits in this special system will also be counted.

In the case of workers on workers on part-time contracts, in order to accredit the minimum 30-year period of contributions, only the contributions paid based on normal hours and overtime worked are counted, calculating their equivalence in theoretical contribution days:

• The number of hours effectively worked will be divided by 5, equivalent to the daily calculation on 1826 annual hours.
• The multiplying coefficient of 1.5 is applied to the number of theoretical contribution days, which results in the number of days considered as certified and in order to determine:
  
• The minimum contribution periods. A fraction of a day, when appropriate, is calculated as a full day.
• The number of contribution years in relation to the percentage calculation to be applied to the pension's regulating base. A fraction of a year is calculated as a full year. 

  3) .- Be registered as a job seeker with the public employment service offices, during a period of 6 months immediately prior to the date of the retirement application. Simultaneously registering as a job-seeker and holding a job as an employed or self-employed worker, will not hinder the fulfilment of this requirement, provided that said job is compatible with registration as a job seeker, in accordance with current legislation.

4) .- If the worker stops working, , as the result of the termination of the employment contract, and this has not  been caused by the free will of the worker. For these purposes, the free will of the worker is understood to be the unequivocal demonstration of will by someone who, while able to continue the employment relationship and with no objective reason not to do so, decides to terminate the employment contract. In any case, the termination of the employment relationship will be considered to be non-voluntary if it was ended as a result of any of the causes listed in art. 208.1.1 of the General Social Security Act (LGSS).

The requirements  of being registered at the employment offices for at least 6 months and for the end of work not to have been caused by reasons that are attributable to the worker are not required if the employer, under the obligation they took on through a collective agreement or an individual pre-retirement contract, paid the worker a monthly sum no lower than the result of adding together the amount that would have corresponded to that worker's unemployment benefits and the contributions that they would have paid for the special agreement with the Social Security after the end of the employment contract and in the two years immediately prior to the application for early retirement. (The new feature is that individual pre-retirement contracts are now considered to be equivalent to collective agreements).

Others people who may apply for retirement, meeting the requirements indicated in sections 1, 2 and 3, when the previous working relationship is terminated for any of the reasons indicated in the previous section, include:

• Recipients of unemployment benefit, when it expires following the duration of the benefit or due to becoming a retirement pensioner, in accordance with letters a) and f), section 1, of article 213  of the LGSS.
• Beneficiaries of the assistance-level unemployment subsidy over the age of 52.
• Workers over the age of 52 who do not meet the requirement for collecting the unemployment subsidy for people over that age, upon completion of the unemployment benefit, who remain registered in the public employment service offices.

Requirements 3 and 4 do not need to be met by workers for whom the company, through obligations taken on through a collective agreement, has paid, for at least 2 years prior to the retirement application, an amount that overall is no lower than the result of multiplying the sum of the following amounts by 24:

• The monthly benefit amount to which the worker would have been entitled as contributory unemployment benefit, had the worker legally entered into a situation of unemployment, on the termination date of the contract.
• The monthly amount of the payment made by the worker under the special agreement to which he or she belongs. 

To certify meeting this requirement, the company must issue a certificate indicating the amounts paid to the worker, due to an obligation acquired through a collective agreement, for at least 2 years immediately prior to the date of retirement, as well as the unemployment contribution bases of the 180 days immediately prior to leaving the company. The worker must submit the certificate from the company, together with the retirement pension application, to the corresponding Managing Body.

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Rules for certain special cases

In the event that contributions accredited under different Social Security schemes have to be calculated:

• The scheme to which the worker is affiliated at the time of the right-granting event will recognise the benefit and will calculate the contributions accredited exclusively under that scheme, as long as all requirements for receiving the pension are met.


• In the event that it is not recognise retirement in this way, the Social Security scheme where he/she is not registered will recognise the pension, as long as the other requirements for accessing retirement are met and exclusively using the contributions accredited in that scheme.


• If it is not possible to access retirement by applying the above rule either, the scheme where the interested party has made the largest contribution will decide.


• If, by applying these rules, the scheme which recognises the pension is the General Scheme (or the Special Scheme for Coal Mining or the Special Scheme for Sea Workers in relation to self-employed people), the interested party may access early retirement through article 161.3 of the General Law on Social Security. If not, early retirement will not be possible.

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