Lawyers and attorneys at war. Because? To demand a decent pension, because they feel “cheated” after betting everything on a mutuality system, replacing the special regime for self-employed workers (RETA). This has led them to a retirement pension of between 300 and 450 euros. A problem that currently affects more than 100,000 lawyers and attorneys in Spain. Yesterday, under the Movimiento umbrella

“The mutualists trusted the management carried out by the mutuals, created when they were born (in 1948) by and for our collective”, remembers the attorney Paloma Isabel Cebrián Palacios in statements to La Vanguardia. “And so it was until the nineties, when the pensions received by our retirees after 35 years of professional practice were 70,000 of the old pesetas for attorneys and 100,000 for lawyers; they were even given payments when they obtained enough benefits that the social fund granted”. The surprise for professionals who are now approaching the age of sixty is that conditions have changed. The pension to which these solicitors and mutual lawyers can aspire and who have not contributed to the RETA scheme does not currently exceed 450 euros.

They are victims, adds Cebrián Palacios, “of the transformation of these mutuals into non-profit private insurance companies, which exercise a voluntary insurance modality complementary to the compulsory social security system”. This prosecutor of the Movement

This solicitor reveals that the problem now generated by those “balance pensions” has its origin in the “false belief that the amount of our quotas went entirely to our capital”. And now we have discovered, he continues, “that the insurance that covers incapacity and death is deducted from the aforementioned quota, and also a percentage for expenses, so that in the individual piggy bank of each one, many will end up there less money than we think”.

What are these lawyers and solicitors asking for? “That the Spanish Government resolve this situation with a royal decree, just as other mutualist groups have achieved”, says Cebrián. El Movimiento