Spain’s Council of Ministers has approved a royal decree that rewrites access to flexible retirement, opening the system to self-employed workers and changing how much retirees can work while drawing a pension.
The reform is set to take effect in three months and comes with three major changes: self-employed workers will be able to use flexible retirement if they have not been registered as self-employed in the previous three years, there will no longer be a minimum waiting period after retirement to apply, and the part-time work band will widen from 33% to 80%, compared with the current 25% to 75% range. The government says the aim is to give workers more and better options when retiring or combining work and pension.
Under the new rules, those who return to flexible retirement more than six months after leaving work will receive an added pension bonus. Part-time work between 55% and 80% of a normal schedule will lift the pension by 25% extra, while work between 33% and 55% will increase it by 15% extra. In the case of self-employed activity, a pensioner will be able to receive up to 25% of the pension while carrying out the compatible work. Someone who was forced into early retirement and later returns through flexible retirement will also see their benefit improved when they go back to full retirement, because the regulatory base and the applicable percentage will be recalculated to reflect the new contribution period.
The move is the latest step in a string of changes introduced since 2021 to make the path from work to retirement less abrupt and to bring the effective retirement age closer to the legal one. In May, the average age at which people started drawing a pension rose to 65.5 years, one year above the level recorded in 2018. Early retirements have fallen to 30%, while workers who keep working beyond the ordinary retirement age now account for more than 12%.
For the Ministry of Inclusion and Seguridad Social, the logic is clear: the system is trying to keep more people economically active for longer, using incentives rather than restrictions. As Minister Elma Saiz put it, the goal is for workers to have “more and better options” when they retire or combine employment and pension, and to offer an improved flexible retirement model. The unanswered question now is practical, not political: how many retirees, especially the self-employed, will actually choose to use it once the decree enters into force in three months.
