Luis Bárcenas turns 67 and requests the maximum retirement pension: “He has every right”

To the ex-treasurer of the PP Luis Barcenas He has more than five of the 12 years that he must serve for the sentence of 29 years and one month that the Supreme Court imposed on him for the Gürtel case. But in two weeks, on August 22, he turns 67 and has already started the paperwork to apply for the pension this summer.

Willy Bárcenas’s father demands that the Ministry of the Interior certify his work activity during the more than four years that he has been in the Soto del Real prison, according to El País. According to the newspaper, sources of his defense of the former treasurer assure that his client has not yet submitted any application to Social Security but they make it clear that “it is within his right.”

Since October last year, the father of the stool singer has met the retirement age requirement, but the law also requires having contributed two of the last 15 years of his working life. Given that he was imprisoned for the first time in June 2013, and due to the fact that the courts did not recognize the employment relationship that he claimed to have maintained with the PP, the former treasurer demands documentation from Penitentiary Institutions to solve it.

The former senator (he was between 2004 and 2011) presented an “instance” last June to be provided with a report “to present to Social Security” certifying that between May 2018 and December 2022, period in which he was imprisoned uninterruptedly in the Soto del Real prison (Madrid) after being sentenced by the National Court, Penitentiary Institutions never offered him a paid job in the center’s workshops and, therefore, he could not contribute for retirement during this period.

Bárcenas wants the doctrine of the Supreme Court baptized as “parenthesis theory” to be applied to him, based on an October 2018 ruling by which a woman who was imprisoned for 20 years had the requirement of having contributed two years of the last 15 years of working life to the period immediately prior to entering prison.

Bárcenas also demands that the Interior certify that while he has been confined he carried out work activities, even if they were not paid. She was a cleaning assistant in the prison module where her cell was, she took a computer course and participated in a restorative justice workshop, that is, a meeting between the inmate and a victim of his crimes to ask for forgiveness. Interior also details sports, educational and even musical activities in the requested report.

Bárcenas left prison in December to spend the rest of his sentence in semi-liberty at the Victoria Kent Center for Social Insertion (CIS, intended for inmates in the open regime), in the center of Madrid. As a second degree inmate (ordinary, in which more than 73% of those convicted in Spain are), he enjoys part of the benefits of inmates classified in the third degree or open regime.

Bárcenas, who spends the night from Monday to Thursday outside the prison and spends the weekends in jail, except for special permits, works and contributes to Social Security. Only by carrying out work activity can you enjoy 15-hour daily departures from the prison. Specifically, she works as an accountant for his son.