# Spanish state pension



## Finest (Jun 11, 2014)

My situation is :- I contributed 30 yrs. to the U.K. system (including 10 yrs. voluntary) and 20 yrs. to the Spanish system.One month after reaching 65, I started recieving my U.K. pension, I applied for the Spanish one 3 months prior to turning 65 and heard nothing, nada !! As I now live in Thailand I decided to contact the Gestor I had used for the last 15 yrs. I worked in Spain and asked him to take up the case. That was in January 2014 and the latest info he has is that I.N.S.S. have sent to the U.K. and heard nothing, 4 months.
I sent my Vida Laboral, certificado de empressa and last nomina. Copy of passport and anything else asked for.
I was upto date with Hacienda as my contable made all the declaraciones de renta.
Question. Is this delay normal?
It has been suggested that on occasion the Spanish authorities can hold back the proccessing of some claims.
Does anybody have some advice?


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## agua642 (May 24, 2009)

Hi, I recently made enquires on state pension in Spain just incase I decided to return to UK I was informed theatre 2 years prior to state retirement I had to pay into the system! regardless of whether I was working or not! not sure on how to take that info but will defiantly look into it closer to my retirement age!


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

agua642 said:


> Hi, I recently made enquires on state pension in Spain just incase I decided to return to UK I was informed theatre 2 years prior to state retirement I had to pay into the system! regardless of whether I was working or not! not sure on how to take that info but will defiantly look into it closer to my retirement age!


That information sounds completely wrong.

Personally I know of no Spanish person who has paid into the state pension up until within 2 years of the official retirement age. They have all retired before the age of 60.

The latest rules require you to have paid in for at least 15 years in order to get any kind of state pension, and they might have told you that you need to keep paying up until with 2 years of retirement age in order to complete those 15 years, but that would have been s`pecific to you and not a general case.


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## gus-lopez (Jan 4, 2010)

Chopera said:


> That information sounds completely wrong.
> 
> Personally I know of no Spanish person who has paid into the state pension up until within 2 years of the official retirement age. They have all retired before the age of 60.
> 
> The latest rules require you to have paid in for at least 15 years in order to get any kind of state pension, and they might have told you that you need to keep paying up until with 2 years of retirement age in order to complete those 15 years, but that would have been s`pecific to you and not a general case.


The 15 years only applies if you have only worked in Spain. If you have worked in more than 1 EU country then you come under EU rules. Which means any country has to pay from year 1 +any payments of less than 1 year are credited to last country worked in.
They state that you apply in the country in which you live or, if you have never worked there then the last country worked in. The OP should have applied to Spain to claim his pension & the Spanish are required then todo all the paperwork to tie up with the UK . Pensions under EU rules are 25-30% greater than a basic one. Hopefully the op will get it corrected & the underpayments back from the UK as well. 

Here Are the EU rules;

EU - Pension claims and calculation of EU pensions-Your Europe


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

gus-lopez said:


> The 15 years only applies if you have only worked in Spain. If you have worked in more than 1 EU country then you come under EU rules. Which means any country has to pay from year 1 +any payments of less than 1 year are credited to last country worked in.
> They state that you apply in the country in which you live or, if you have never worked there then the last country worked in. The OP should have applied to Spain to claim his pension & the Spanish are required then todo all the paperwork to tie up with the UK . Pensions under EU rules are 25-30% greater than a basic one. Hopefully the op will get it corrected & the underpayments back from the UK as well.
> 
> Here Are the EU rules;
> ...


You can claim an EU pension if you like, but you don't have to. If you have racked up enough years to claim both the Spanish state pension and the UK state pension you can opt to claim those instead. I think that's what the OP is trying to do.


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## gus-lopez (Jan 4, 2010)

Chopera said:


> You can claim an EU pension if you like, but you don't have to. If you have racked up enough years to claim both the Spanish state pension and the UK state pension you can opt to claim those instead. I think that's what the OP is trying to do.


No it doesn't work like that. The OP has 30 years which is a full UK pension & 20 years in Spanish system which , I believe, is approx 57% of full spanish pension . By claiming it under EU rules he would still get both a full UK pension but at the enhanced EU ate & the same % Spanish pension also at the enhanced rate. 

I always used to think that regardless you ended up with a pension at enhanced rates but basically just a bit more than a pension from 1 country. Until my brother claimed who lived & worked in Germany for 30+ years. 
If you can manage to be entitled to a full pension in 3 countries that's what you'd get ,but at the enhanced EU rate. 
As I've said before I don't think they gave too much thought to this when setting it out.


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

gus-lopez said:


> No it doesn't work like that. The OP has 30 years which is a full UK pension & 20 years in Spanish system which , I believe, is approx 57% of full spanish pension . By claiming it under EU rules he would still get both a full UK pension but at the enhanced EU ate & the same % Spanish pension also at the enhanced rate.
> 
> I always used to think that regardless you ended up with a pension at enhanced rates but basically just a bit more than a pension from 1 country. Until my brother claimed who lived & worked in Germany for 30+ years.
> If you can manage to be entitled to a full pension in 3 countries that's what you'd get ,but at the enhanced EU rate.
> As I've said before I don't think they gave too much thought to this when setting it out.


I'm not saying you can't do that, it's just that you don't have to. If you've paid enough into the Spanish system then you can claim a Spanish state pension, and if you've paid enough into the UK system you can claim a UK state pension, and they can't stop you from doing that. 

Of course you might be better off claiming the EU pension rate instead - but there is also an advantage to having two pensions paid in different currencies. The UK also allows you to make voluntary contributions while overseas, so you can pay into the UK system and the Spanish system at the same time. In theory you can make 30 years contributions to the UK system and 35 years contributions to the Spanish system, so does that mean you can then claim 65 years of contributions at the enhanced EU rate? I'd be surprised if they let you get away with that.


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## gus-lopez (Jan 4, 2010)

Chopera said:


> I In theory you can make 30 years contributions to the UK system and 35 years contributions to the Spanish system, so does that mean you can then claim 65 years of contributions at the enhanced EU rate? I'd be surprised if they let you get away with that.


Yep that's exactly what they've done.
It is supposed to be each country as a % if it had all been paid in , in one country. It never occurred to them that if someone was able to contribute fully in 2 countries that they'd be liable for 2 full pensions. :lol:


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

gus-lopez said:


> Yep that's exactly what they've done.
> It is supposed to be each country as a % if it had all been paid in , in one country. It never occurred to them that if someone was able to contribute fully in 2 countries that they'd be liable for 2 full pensions. :lol:



On reflection it doesn't surprise me at all that they allow it since many people working for the EU get to take advantage of it themselves


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## Finest (Jun 11, 2014)

Firstly thanks for the informative responses, as usual there seems to be more than one option available here. If I press on with my claim to I.N.S.S. As I understand your comments I will be likely to end up with less per month than following the E.U. Route.
If on the other hand I ask the gestor to follow the E.U. path I may end up at the back of the queue. I would appreciate any and all thoughts on this.
Needless to say my location doesn't help.


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

To be honest I can't help very much. A potential reason why the EU route might be quicker is it is probably funded entirely by the EU rather than Spain, in which case the Spanish authorities would only be too happy to put you onto that system.

I will be in a similar situation to you in 10 years time so I have an interest in this. However knowing my luck the system will have changed, or the UK will be outside the EU by the time I retire, so I won't have the EU pension available to me anyway.


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

gus-lopez said:


> The 15 years only applies if you have only worked in Spain. If you have worked in more than 1 EU country then you come under EU rules. Which means any country has to pay from year 1 +any payments of less than 1 year are credited to last country worked in.
> They state that you apply in the country in which you live or, if you have never worked there then the last country worked in. The OP should have applied to Spain to claim his pension & the Spanish are required then todo all the paperwork to tie up with the UK . Pensions under EU rules are 25-30% greater than a basic one. Hopefully the op will get it corrected & the underpayments back from the UK as well.
> 
> Here Are the EU rules;
> ...


I've have re-read that article and I think it might be slightly misleading regarding the EU pension rate. I think it is saying that in some countries the local rate might be increased once it takes into acount all the years worked in different EU countries (the pro rata rate). I don't think there is a special "EU rate" that gets applied instead.

For example if someone pays the minimum monthly contribution into the Spanish system for 20 years they will get a certain pension rate, based on the amount of years worked and the amount paid in each month. The rate would be relatively low because they only contributed the minimum amount each month.

However if that person has also contributed to the UK system for 20 years, the Spanish authorities have to work out a new rate (the pro rata rate) based on the 40 years of contributions overall, and apply that to the 20 years worked in Spain. The problem is it's impossible for them to work out the monthly contributions for the 20 years in the UK system because it's a completely different system. So they work out the new pro rata rate assuming that person paid in the maximum amount each month for those 20 years in the UK. This new pro rata rate will therefore be higher for the person in question, because it is based on paying in 20 years minimum monthly contributions in Spain plus 20 years maximum monthly contributions in the UK, rather than being solely based on 20 years of minimum monthly contributions in Spain.

However if that person had been paying in the maximum amount each month into the Spanish system for those 20 years, they would be on the maximum rate anyway, so the pro rata rate would not be any higher.


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## Finest (Jun 11, 2014)

One of my points on my OP was is this time frame normal I.e. January til now. 
Another was do the I.N.S.S. sit on these claims. Do they have a cut off point, in other words after say a year do they archive it. As I understand it if it takes X months to process the claim they have to backdate the payments to the actual date your pension should have started


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## Leonardino (Oct 31, 2017)

Finest said:


> My situation is :- I contributed 30 yrs. to the U.K. system (including 10 yrs. voluntary) and 20 yrs. to the Spanish system.One month after reaching 65, I started recieving my U.K. pension, I applied for the Spanish one 3 months prior to turning 65 and heard nothing, nada !! As I now live in Thailand I decided to contact the Gestor I had used for the last 15 yrs. I worked in Spain and asked him to take up the case. That was in January 2014 and the latest info he has is that I.N.S.S. have sent to the U.K. and heard nothing, 4 months.
> I sent my Vida Laboral, certificado de empressa and last nomina. Copy of passport and anything else asked for.
> I was upto date with Hacienda as my contable made all the declaraciones de renta.
> Question. Is this delay normal?
> ...


In order to compensate for the social security contribution for entitlement to a pension, these are countries with bilateral agreements on social security. It is more complex than putting two administrations in contact to organize themselves. The issue is that social security contributions in the Spanish system are directly responsible for the amount of the pension.


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## Gfplux (Jun 27, 2016)

My understanding of the EU rules is that you consolidate your pension contributions in one EU country. That Country would likely be the one you are living/working in before you retire.
I have family who have contributions in the UK and Luxembourg. That person who now lives in Luxembourg approached the state pension service. They (are obliged) to contact the UK and after a couple of months they issued a pension forecast on figures supplied by the UK consolidated with figures in Luxembourg. The person was told that this request to the UK could not be done untill they were within 5 years of retirement age.

I think that the original poster should telephone the UK to ask if they can do the consolidation.


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## Nick Boonham (Sep 26, 2017)

This is a querstion which has been on my mind as well so will ask mine and although it might have been answered would appreciate some comments and also what is an EU pension and who pays it.
I worked from 16 in the UK from 1978 to 2003 when I moved to Canada. However I now am working in Spain and when I retire will have been working for 11 years. What is my best options from you guys just so I have some ideas.
Cheers
Nick


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

Nick Boonham said:


> This is a querstion which has been on my mind as well so will ask mine and although it might have been answered would appreciate some comments and also what is an EU pension and who pays it.
> I worked from 16 in the UK from 1978 to 2003 when I moved to Canada. However I now am working in Spain and when I retire will have been working for 11 years. What is my best options from you guys just so I have some ideas.
> Cheers
> Nick


You should be able to pay Annual Voluntary Contributions (AVCs) to the UK in order to make up any shortfall and claim the full UK state pension if you wish.

I believe 11 years is not enough to claim the Spanish contribution based state pension (you need 15 years) so as things stand you might not get anything directly from the Spanish government. The EU system is designed to get round this problem by effectively allowing you to make the UK contributions count towards the Spanish state pension instead of the UK state pension. Whether this option remains open to you when you retire depends on the outcome of Brexit.

As there is a risk that your contributions to the Spanish pension scheme may count for nothing, it might be worth making sure you are paying no more than the bare minimum social security contribution, and then pay into a private pension fund to make up any difference. I guess you'd need to talk to your employer about this.

I'm no expert on this by the way, and it seems you do need to speak to one. Although really I think so much is up in the air at the moment, maybe nobody knows what the best way forward is.


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