FIFTH SECTION
CASE OF MENDIETA BORREGO v. SPAIN
(Application no. 3958/24)
 
 
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT
 
STRASBOURG
16 October 2025
 
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Mendieta Borrego v. Spain,
The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
 Andreas Zünd, President,
 María Elósegui,
 Mykola Gnatovskyy, judges,
and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 3958/24) against the Kingdom of Spain lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 25 January 2024 by a Spanish national, Ms Eva Mendieta Borrego (“the applicant”), who was born in 1977, lives in Gelida and was represented by Mr L. Costa Sánchez, a lawyer practising in Barcelona;
the decision to give notice of the application to the Spanish Government (“the Government”), represented by their co-Agent, Ms H. E. Nicolás Martínez;
the decision to reject the Government’ s objection to examination of the application by the Committee;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated in private on 18 September 2025,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The application concerns the applicant’s complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention about the refusal to grant her a survivor’s pension following the death of her partner. It belongs to a group of similar applications, follow-ups of the Court’s judgment in Valverde Digon v. Spain, no. 22386/19, 26 January 2023 (see also Domenech Aradilla and Rodríguez González v. Spain, nos. 32667/19 and 30807/20, 19 January 2023). 2. The applicant cohabitated with her partner since 2003. In June 2008 her partner divorced from his wife. The applicant and her partner have three children together, one born in January 2008 and two others born in 2009. 3. Under the legal regime in force in Catalonia until March 2014, civil partnerships were not required to fulfil any formal registration requirement for surviving partners to be entitled to a survivor’s pension (provided that they met other requirements). Following the Constitutional Court’s judgment no. STC 40/2014 of 11 March 2014, published on 10 April 2014, as of the latter date access to survivor’s pensions for civil partnerships everywhere in Spain including Catalonia required the partnership to have been formally registered at least two years before one of the partners’ passing away. Relevant legal provisions and practice, including the impugned Constitutional Court’s judgment, are summarised in Valverde Digon (cited above, §§ 15-28). 4. The applicant and her partner were never married or registered as “de facto” or civil partners. On 7 June 2015 the applicant’s partner died. Following her partner’s death, the applicant applied to the National Institute of Social Security (“INSS”) for a survivor’s pension. On 2 July 2015 the INSS rejected her request due to her failure to comply with legal requirements, namely the failure to formalise a civil partnership at least two years prior to her partner’s death. Her administrative appeal against this refusal was dismissed on 24 August 2015. 5. On 29 December 2017 the Labour Court no. 4 of Barcelona upheld the administrative refusal to recognise her right to survivor’s pension. According to the first-instance court, it “could be admitted” that the two-year registration requirement was impossible to comply with for de facto partners, if they had registered their partnership after the Constitutional Court’s judgment, but one of the partners died before the two-year period had expired. Therefore, the court, without giving details, did not rule out the possibility of modifying the two-year criterion where it was impossible or very difficult to comply with due to exceptional circumstances, such as illness or disability. However, it found that, in the absence of such circumstances in the case of the applicant and her partner, the requirement was fully applicable to them. On 11 March 2019 the High Court of Justice of Catalonia upheld the refusal on appeal, citing the lack of registration of her partnership two years prior to the death of the applicant’s partner. The applicant’s subsequent cassation appeal was rejected. On 27 October 2023 the Constitutional Court declared her amparo appeal inadmissible. 6. The applicant complained that the refusal by the domestic authorities to grant her a survivor’s pension due to unforeseeable retrospective application of a new eligibility requirement was in breach of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention.

Outcome for Article P1-1: violation