The rule is that you have to claim your pension in the country in which you last paid social security which, if I understand you correctly, would be Spain. They will then liase with UK to determine what you get.

I may be wrong but despite your class 2 contributions I don't think you can get full pensions from both countries.

 

You can get 2 separate pensions. You claim your UK first ( you reach that age before Spanish age) and get the UK one. Then once you hit the Spanish age you claim that one separately. You would only mix the two if you had less than 15 years in Spain and needed more years to get the Spanish full pension. 15 years is the minimum to get a separate Spanish pension- less than 15 gives you no separate pension but can be added to your UK one. Lucky you!!

 

I agree with Kaipa, it shoud work like this.
I will be in a similar situation but in about 15 years time (my forecasts are 97% UK pension, assuming I pay my voluntary contributions from now until I retire, and 100% Spanish, assuminig I keep working until I retire) and I understood that I woud be able to claim each one independently when the respective times come.
But as with the OP, I have not known of anyone who has actually done this successfully.

 

I think that it will be hard to find people here who have managed to work for 15 years officially given that it has been so common in the past for things like teaching etc to be paid in the black. Now that the authorities have clamped down on this I imagine there will be a larger cohort to come in around 5 years time.

 

I did do a part time teaching job for a year, almost 20 years ago, and surprisingly it was legal and with "cotizaciones". I consider myself quite lucky in that all of my jobs in Spain (and I've had a lot) have had at least a part of the wages legalised. But you are right, I am probably the exception.

 

Yes you are in a good position to get to full pensions. I won't make 15 years by the time my UK one kicks in. I could mix the UK part with the Spanish part and try and get a Spanish pension but it is not quite as simple as just years it is also worked out on effectively on if you worked full or part time so I think I will need to get a Spanish forecast and compare that with the UK one.

 

As said earlier, you apply our pensions in the last country you worked in. They liaise with all the other countries and take into account overall years worked. So , for example, you wold qualify for a pro rata Spanish pension having only worked here for 14 year
The different retiring ages is an added complication. If you leave it till later, your Spanish pension is not backdated to your retiring age but paid from when you applied.
My advice would be to go to your INSS office ( witappointment) andtalk it through. They will undoubtedly need to refer to their head office. You could also talk to UK DwP.

 

The other key difference between UK and Spanish pensions is the UK one is fixed, but the Spanish one is dependent on average earnings in the years prior to retirement. Also the Spanish one is a lot more generous.

 

The UK one raises every year does it not? They are now raised by what is called triple lock.
Here is a comparison from the OCED
The UK
Spain
I do not feel that the Spanish pension is lot more generous.

 

"The average pension you'll receive depends on which autonomous community you live in. But the maximum state pension nationwide is €2,617.53, and the minimum amount is €642.90. On average, this number is just over €1,100 per month."

The Spanish Pension System for Expats

Learn about the Spanish pension system: from how to receive a pension as an expat to why it’s important to have a private pension plan

housinganywhere.com

The Spanish maximum pension is higher than the UK maximum pension.

 

Thank you. However I still feel it is more complicated then those headline figures.
I still cannot find actual figures which will back up the theory that a Spanish pension is better than the UK pension. There are too many ifs in the Spanish system which clouds just how much one gets as a pension. That is backed up with the link you provided. It only only gives averages per Autonomous Community. Ti wonder how many of the pensions are paid at below that average. It takes only a small number of higher pensions to increase the average.
Those retiring in the UK only have to pay in for 30 years to receive a full pension. Whereas in Spain you have to pay in for 37 years.

 

Rusty, I too have to get to understand exactly what the actual maximum will be in Spain. I can either go for full UK pension plus partial (not full number of years contributions) Spanish pension OR use my UK years to top up my Spanish pension years.

 

Yes the thing is with the Spanish pension it isn't just about contributing years as with UK. Everything depends on essentially how much you work in those years. If you look at things like your Vida laboral you will see that they give you days worked which aligns with whether you work full or partial days etc plus they use a strange 14 payments over a year - all this makes it quite complex to actually work out. Plus there is this strange situation where your final year has an effect on the whole pension. It really is impossible to work out unless you go to INSS and get someone to go through it with and my experience is that unless you are actually at retirement stage they simply won't do this or rather they tell you ( if you have worked abroad)that they can't do it or they simply don't know. An example is that if you read up you see 15 years gives you a min pensión but that is only if you work 15 years full time and you need to work right up to your retirement age to get it- you can't stop at say 64.

 

I dont agree " An example is that if you read up you see 15 years gives you a min pensión but that is only if you work 15 years full time " , you can work 30 years on a 20 hour contract or numerous different contracts , even 2 and 4 hour ones as long as they equate to 15 years x 40 hours . The Spanish pension site shows your credited years which if you follow will increase as time passes by the percentage of 40 hours worked . My wife is on a 10 hour contract and has been for some years , i see it increase a month every 4 months and a year every 4 years , although different hourly contracts its been that way for 22 years . 20 hours is the biggest contract she has had and her entitlement now stands at 9 years and a month plus 12 years UK Qualifying years as they are now included .

 

Not everyone is capable of working up to retirement age. Be that owing to poor health, lack of availability of suitable work or indeed age discrimination by employers. But how does it work for these people?

How pensions are calculated in Spain

The calculation of the public pension in Spain is constantly evolving after the 2013 reform and always at the expense of political decisions. Keep reading.

segurosypensionesparatodos.fundacionmapfre.org

.

 

I believe there is a non- contribution pension available if you don't qualify for state pension but it is means-tested so I assume you have to be living at a pretty distressing level of income to need that. Otherwise the rule is something like you have to work so many years in a particular period just before retiring- I can't remember exactly. Anyway the UK pension is the safest one to get so it's important to keep up contributions if necessary but if you stop before 67 years and try to get a Spanish pension by mixing the two you might fall foul of the Spanish requirement to have been working before retirement. I am sure someone can shed more light on this all I know is that Spanish folk say the hardest year is your last cause that seems to be the one that counts most when working out your pension.

 

Spain has a minimum and maximum amount on its state pension. The maximum amount in 2019 was €2,617.53.

Spanish pensions: how to retire in Spain

Here's what you need to know about spending your golden years in Spain.

www.expatica.com

Maximum Spanish pension is quite good then.

 

It is good but like I say you need to have made max contributions. 37 years full time right up to the last year-and there in lies the problem. It can be hard to retain full time contracts for 37 years especially in your last years. This is why people compete so heavily for funcionario jobs- it fixes them into long term contracts. UK is less pension but you could say it favours those who work less and basically once you reach the requisite years you can take your foot of the pedal- even take early retirement. Not the case in Spain.

 

I met a girl last Thursday who has to be mid career and she told me she was studying towards a funcionario job. It did leave me a bit puzzled, but after you've said what you did, the penny has dropped!

Having scanned the posts on my phone, I think if you've enough pension years imported from the UK, it might be possible to go at 65, with the Spanish pension.

 

Thanks to everyone for there comments on my original question.
Its now clear to me that i should claim both my Spanish and UK pensions seperately.
The conditions for requesting the Spanish pension "anticipado voluntario" are that you must be at least 65 years old and have minimum contribution of 35 years.
In my particular case i will never get to have 38 years contributions in order to get the maximum Spanish pension (3175,04€ in 2024) which means they will reduce this amount by 5% when making the final calculation.
As i have contributed 32 years into the UK state pension i will claim this seperately but will not receive the full amount. The difference between having 32 or 35 years NICs is a minimal amout which i can handle.

 

I am in the same situation.

Regarding Spain I have bought a book called De Cara a la Jubilation by Ignacio Solsona and it is very good.
For a contributory pension - You have to have worked for 2 years in the last 15 years or qualify under the Doctrina de Paréntesis.

You can fill lagunas (gaps) in your years to increase them for having had children, for looking after them, etc.

For a non contributory pension there are rules about having lived in Spain for 10 years and then living there for the last two before you request this pension - as long as you don't earn over a certain amount of income per year.

Ignacio Solsona has you-tubes which explain a lot about the Spanish pension.

I understand now that you can request both the UK and Spanish pensions separately (if the calculations are better obviously).

We have until April / July 2025 to buy back national insurance years from 2006-2016. The benefit of the UK pension is that it is inflation proofed.

 

The advantate of the Spanish pension is that you can get €3,058.81 (£2624), but you only get a max of €1116 (£958) with the UK pension, per month.
Bit of a no brainer!
The question is if you actually are lucky enough to get both, and you live in Spain, what taxes are applied to these?

 

But you don't get a full Spanish pension by transferring your UK pension say 32 years and adding it to your Spanish contributions say 5 years. It is not that simple. The Spanish one is worked out by contributing years and the size of your contributions whereas UK one you just need to make minimum contribution over 35 years.

 

Yes, understand the rules are different to calculate the two pensions.
Also, as we are on a Spanish forum mostly frequnted by British living in Spain, quite likely they spent the first part of their working life in the UK and the latter part in Spain.
i am guessing that it it a prerequisite that a minimum of 15 years are required to get the Spanish pension, if you are thinking of combining the UK and Spainish pensions.
But that is not what I am referring to in my previous post.
My question is, if you actually are lucky enough to get both, and you live in Spain, what taxes (or other reductions) are applied to these...?

 

If they are both state pensions (Spanish and English) then they are both taxable in Spain and would just be added together and entered as income on your tax return. The tax allowance would be €6,700 (for anyone aged 65 or over) which increases to €8,100 when you reach 75, plus the €2,000 general allowance.

 

Thank you Lynn

 

Hi
Yes I Have 28 years in Spain and 22 years in UK with voluntary payments and I will retire in 2 years----- my uk pension is about £730 a month at the moment and should reach £900 in 2 years
and my spanish pension is about £700 in 2 years time=========Total. £1,600. If you combine the two you will get the FulL uk pension which is the highest of the two and will be in the region of £1,200 in two years time
The numbers speak for themselves -------Two pensions are better than one

 

Hi
Yes I Have 28 years in Spain and 22 years in UK with voluntary payments and I will retire in 2 years----- my uk pension is about £730 a month at the moment and should reach £900 in 2 years
and my spanish pension is about £700 in 2 years time=========Total. £1,600. If you combine the two you will get the FulL uk pension which is the highest of the two and will be in the region of £1,200 in two years time
The numbers speak for themselves -------Two pensions are better than one

Yes this is true but you have contributed for more than 15 years in Spain so you can claim 2 separate pensions. If you had only 14 years in Spain you could not have two separate pensions.

 

Assuming you have made the required number of years contributions to qualify for a full pension.
Prior to retirening, what salary do you need to get the £2,700 a month pension in Spain?

 

The figure for 2023 was €3,568 per month, apparently.

Esto es lo que tienes que ganar para cobrar la pensión máxima de 3.059 euros en 2023 (elespanol.com)

 

If I will have paid 24 years into the Spain pension, when I retire, and also get the full UK pension, How do I know ifi would be better taking both pensions or using the UK years to bring my Spanish pension up to the full years requirement?

 

I’m in exactly the same position. Full UK pension with voluntary contributions and 24 years in Spanish system. I just spoke to international pensions centre, who assured me I can get both and I should apply separately. But whether applying for both at same time would improve the Spanish pension is maybe a question for the INSS, although they might just say you have to wait until you reach retirement age here and apply. I will be interested to know if you discover anything…

 

But what I think we need to know before we start drawing one pension is whether one pension or two pensions is best financially. The other wild card is obviously the exchange rate, but nothing we can do about that, and it has varied from parity to almost 1.5 times over the years.

 

After trying unsuccessfully to get an answer from INSS i contacted a lawyer with experience in pension related issues.
They have informed me that it is possible to claim both the UK and state pensions separately but the amount you will receive will depend on individual contribution records for each country.
In my case i have 33 years of pension contributions in the UK and 35 years and 6 months in Spain.

Therefore for me it would make no finacial sense to combine the 2 pensions.

The main point to keep in mind is that when i request my Spanish pension in November this year i have to answer NO to the question "have you worked abroad" .
By doing this INSS will calculate my pension on the contributions i have made in Spain without consulting with the UK pension service.

In january 2025 i will reach retirement age in the UK and then i can claim my UK pension (this has been verified by speaking to the International pension service helpline.

The amount of pension you receive in Spain depends on the number of years worked and the amount that you and your employer have been paying each month during the last 25 years (or the number of years worked in Spain).
I can go into the calculation in another post but the max. you can receive in 2024 is 3175 € before tax.
For the UK its different , the maximum amount you receive would be the same for everybody who have contributed the max. number of years (35 at the moment) , in my case the last quote i have received is 219 pounds/week when i reach retirement age.
Hope this helps to clear up some of your questions.

 

Now this is VERY interesting and something I have noticed. When you get your Spanish pension forecast by default it will assume you have ONLY worked in Spain. It actually says that if you have worked abroad you need to visit them to amend their records and I now have a sneaky suspicion that this might effect your Spanish pension ( in a not good way). The very fact that a lawyer told you not to tell them that suggests as much.

 

This is good to know and ties in with what I was told 2 days ago by the International Pensions Centre, i.e., that there is no obligation to ask for them together. And you would only do so if your contributions to one of them are below the minimum.

I think you would have to persuade INSS to simulate the effect of the two pensions together around 18 months before the UK pension kicks in. On the online Simulador de Jubilación it says they calculate foreign pensions only when you actually claim the pensions, so sounds unlikely. Maybe they could give an idea of the effect, if any, of the EU equivalent rate combining the full UK pension and 24 years or whatever of the Spanish…

Also, if you ask for them together, you would be deferring the UK pension, which does rise I think by 1% for every 9 weeks deferred, but you would have lost around a year’s UK pension or whatever. So how long to recover that? So all a bit of a gamble.

And a couple of days ago I was talking to someone at the International Pensions Centre who mentioned in passing that even though my UK pension is forecast to kick in from July 2026, it might change.

What I don’t understand is if asking for them together can actually result in less than what you get separately, which I’ve seen implied elsewhere. Surely with enough qualifying years each system would at least pay according to your contributions into it?

As to the exchange rate, in my pension income planning I assume parity, and reduce my Spanish forecast by 20%, given that it is rather tenuously based on what they think it will be in 3 years. That avoids shocks, and anything above that will be a bonus.

 

I think you have to consider this question about if you have ever worked abroad - which is asked by the INSS to give your pension forecast. Not sure about the advice of saying no!!! Sounds a bit dodgy to me and I would like to know if this means you only get two pensions if you lie ( which would be fraud) . I really think you need to visit INSS.

 

This goes back to the question bugging me: can you really have two overlapping pensions (through voluntary contributions)? Can you pay into two national insurance systems at the same time without one somehow reducing the other?
The person I spoke to at the International Pensions Centre told me there was no problem with this, and indeed why would the UK allow us to pay vounatry contributions if that were not the case?
But I’m still left with the doubt as I've just received a letter from the HMRC saying I can buy them and get a full UK pension.

 

I don't think UK care as they see it as you have paid for a UK pension and know nothing about your Spanish one. All I am saying is that another poster has pointed out that Spain requires you to notify them if you have ever worked abroad and they said that you should answer that as No. Now I am just wondering what happens if you tell the truth and say Yes. Does it effect what Spain will pay? I don't know but I do remember that when I look at my pension forecast it tells me that it is formulated on various things ( age, level of contributions, married etc plus it says I have never worked abroad ) it then says that if any of these things are incorrect you need to contact them. So I don't know what happens but the other poster's remarks suggest it would in someway effect your Spanish pension.