Compulsory military service, the ‘mili’, was eliminated in Spain in 2001, which ended an obligation that bound many Spaniards who had to comply with it for several decades and generations. These workers, however, can obtain a benefit in accessing their retirement pension from that period if they do so in advance.
The reason is that Social Security can contemplate part of that period that he served in the ‘military’ as part of the quoted time that must be accredited in order to be entitled to early retirement. In fact, it can mean the difference between accessing early retirement or not in some cases.
“periods of military service or substitute social benefit are only computed to reach the specific contribution period in the case of early, voluntary or involuntary retirement and with a maximum limit of one year”.
To access voluntary early retirement, the worker needs at least 35 years of contributions. If he had, for example, 34 years of contributions and had done the ‘military’, he could take advantage of early retirement thanks to that compulsory military service or substitute social benefit.
In parallel, voluntary early retirement can only be done in those cases in which 33 years of previous contributions are accredited. As in the opposite case, if the worker has, for example, 32 and a half years of contributions, he will be able to use that period of the ‘mili’ to fill in the half year that is missing and be able to retire early.
This mechanism is only used for this possible application of early retirement. It does not serve to improve the reduction coefficient of early retirement, since it depends on the advance age, nor to improve the early retirement bracket (it changes depending on the years of contributions, but this maximum year can only be added in the event of be strictly necessary to be able to take early retirement).
The use of the ‘military’ in ordinary retirement is an old demand that has not been heard by successive governments in recent decades. The Executive of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero promised to present “a bill that establishes a system of compensation to Social Security so that it can recognize, in favor of interested persons, a period of assimilation of the time of service obligatory military service or substitute social provision”.
This idea, which was intended to compensate for “the interruption of the contribution careers caused”, was parked with the change of Government after the November 2011 elections and has not been taken up by the Popular Party or by the PSOE Executives alone and with United We Can in coalition.
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