These things are sent to try us: one

My Spanish old age pension is paid by the Seguridad Social. The idea is that I get a proportion of my state pension from the UK and a portion from Spain based on my work history in each country. Yesterday the SS sent me a text message to say that there was a message waiting for me on my account page on their website. The message was quite bald. "Your retirement benefit has been cancelled. You can find more information in gestiones" - I don't know how to translate gestiones for you - maybe something like management or processes. In gestiones it said "No steps have been found".

I think it may be an error or it may be an unfortunate use of the Spanish verb cancelar. It means cancelled but it means cancelled in both directions and finance language is a bit strange. It seems to be that the accounting viewpoint always reflects the situation of the payer. I'm hoping that when the SS tells me that they have cancelled my benefit they mean that they have cancelled their debt to me for this month. It's a bit of wishful thinking and when I asked a Spanish friend if she thought that may be what the language meant she was quite clear that it didn't. But that's the straw I'm clinging to at the moment. 

Otherwise I can look forward to a few visits to the SS office and a bundle of form filling and even maybe the loss of a significant part of my monthly income.

Update: The pension turned up in my bank account on the habitual date and in the expected amount. I have no idea why I got the message. Presumably it was just to unsettle me!

He loved Big Brother

I didn't sleep particularly well last night. I kept waking up with some half formed Spanish phrase rolling around the empty quarters of my mind before lapsing back into semi unconsciousness. It wasn't the thought of what the Catalans might do after the sentencing of their pro independence politicians today, it was because I was off to the Social Security office.

When I was last in that office, just before Christmas, I was told that my old age pension would include a little from Spain and a lot more from Britain. I started to get money from the UK, on time, in May. I expected a top up from Spain last month.  But it didn't come. Worse than that, trying to find out why not, I found, online, that my health care had been downgraded from a constitutional right as a worker to a bit of a dispensation for foreigners. Given that the UK has been a hotbed of political idiocy for a few years the less I have to depend on anything coming from there and the more I can rely on things directly from here the better.

I was worried about my appointment on two scores. The first, the perennial, is simply being able to present my case in Spanish. The second is that if my Spanish work history, dodgy and short as it is, was going to be disregarded then all those times I had stood out for a legal contract were going to be wasted. I also know that challenging a wrong, unfair or unreasonable bureaucratic decision is a hard and thankless slog.

My appointment was on the dot, no waiting at all. I told the bloke behind the desk that all I wanted to know was where I stood with Social Security - did I have Spanish rights or just foreign ones? We talked for a while, he looked at paperwork and then he said the magic words "If you've paid in to the system here then you have the right to health care". That was all I needed to hear. I was as happy as Larry; anything else was largely irrelevant. By the way apparently the phrase comes from the state of mind of an undefeated Australian 19th century boxer, Larry Foley, on retirement. But then  he made me happier. I was asked why I hadn't claimed the Spanish part of my pension. It seems that going in December hadn't been enough. I should have gone back when I finished working in April. We filled in the paperwork. All I have to do now is wait.

The handshake, as I left , was as warm as a manly, cisgender, handshake can be.

The headlong dash

In the olden days, when we British men reached 65 we could retire. Before I left the Sceptred Isle I checked with the pension people. Yes, I was OK, I'd paid enough into the system to be entitled to a full state pension when the time came. That's not true any more. Thank goodness for that Y chromosome though. Back in those same olden days women got their pensions at 60. As a man my first payment has only been pushed back a few months, not five years. Like the British scheme the Spanish pension system is creaking. Can you imagine the scenes at the government Christmas party when the health people are ostracised by the pension people? Are you the the idiots who are keeping all those old people alive?

I was reading the news last night and there was an article about pensions. It mentioned that the process of claiming is very long winded and it suddenly struck me that maybe I should be getting started. After all I've worked for most of the time that I've been here. I'm not sure what my entitlement is to a Spanish pension. I know that, as an EU citizen any pension earned in one country is added to any pension earned in another EU country. Now, exactly as in the UK, the Spanish Government is pushing up the retirement age. It was headline news  a few years back but if I ever knew the detail I've forgotten it. Fortunately Google knows everything. Since 2013 the date has been moving upwards, a month for a year. The start point was 65 so, this year it's got to 65 years and 6 months. Next year the move upwards will gain momentum and go up by two months a year until it will supposedly stabilise at 67. My pension year is 2019 with a birthday in January so I'll be able to claim a Spanish pension at 65 years and 8 months. I should get the British one at 65 years and 4 months.

To get a full Spanish pension you have to work 35 years and you have to do at least 15 years to get even a percentage of the pension. With a first, cursory, read of the pension information on the web I think that Spanish definition means the sum of my European Union working life. So I presume that I'll be well over the 35 years because I did nearly that in the UK and I've been here now for 14 years. It may be, of course, that as I don't have 15 years in Spain I'll get nothing here but I don't think that's how it works.

Whatever happens I presume my UK pension is relatively safe but it may not be. My Spanish work history may be the problem. I've never worked long hours and I've never had a decent salary here. On top of that most of the time my employers have fiddled the Social Security to reduce their payments. It's just possible that the aggregate of my British and Spanish pensions may be dragged down by my pathetic Spanish earnings. And, of course, there is always the uncertainty added in by Brexit.

To claim either or both pensions I, currently, have to go to the pension office in the country I last worked in and that's here, in Spain. So, even though the majority of my payments were made in the UK my pension will be paid in Spain through the Spanish system or at least that's what my very cursory late night reading, last night, suggests. I'm not quite sure how the mechanics of that will work, in the sense of who actually stumps up the cash but, to be honest, I don't really care so long as someone does. What I'll have to do is to read some stuff on the Internet so I have some clue about the theory of how it works and than I'll have to go and talk to some real people in an office to see how it actually works.

I'm having a bit of a trough Spanish language wise at the moment and the thought of ploughing through turgid government websites and dealing with lots of government offices does not exactly fill me with joy. There's money at stake though so, time to get reading I suppose.