In the latest chapter of Spanish bureaucratic nightmares, the country’s Seguridad Social takes centre stage.

For several months now, there have been an increasing number of reports in local and national media that the country’s social security system is facing “collapse”.

But crucially it’s ordinary citizens who are experiencing most of the hardship, as the delays Spanish civil servants have blamed on a 25 percent drop in personnel have resulted in Spanish gatekeeping 2.0.

“This is a joke, I’ve been waiting for four months”, “Getting an appointment at the Seguridad Social is an absolute odyssey” or “I’m dying and they give me an appointment to claim my retirement in four months”, are some of the headlines in the Spanish press highlighting the public’s frustration.

This last headline is a quote from a man interviewed by La Sexta TV who has terminal cancer, has paid his taxes for 40 years but can’t get the help he needs to enjoy his pension for the time he has left.

Spain’s dreaded cita previa, the appointment system which means members of the public need to book their visit to Spanish social security offices ahead of time, has become mandatory for all purposes.

Even popping in to ask a quick question requires a cita previa as most Social Security (INSS) offices have effectively banned in-person customer service without a prior appointment. Try to enter the building without a cita and you will be turned away by a security guard.

Faced with this closed-doors policy, people turn to the INSS website, app or phone number that will allegedly get them that much-needed appointment.

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On the website or app, they’ll more often than not get a message that says “no hay citas disponibles” (there are no available appointments), or if there are slots available, they’re months away.

Some benefits applications can be completed online, but the website is prone to crashing when there are too many users on the website, or if you’re missing specific software on your computer.

Navigating Spain’s convoluted public websites is a big ask even for those who are tech-savvy, but for elderly people without this knowledge it’s virtually impossible.

Instead they turn to something they understand better: calling the Social Security offices on the phone. But civil servants won’t pick up, or the line is dead or busy, no matter how many times they try.

According to Spain’s main trade union UGT, over the course of 2022, civil servants at Spain’s primary welfare institution failed to answer 3.9 million phone calls.

For budding pensioners, widows, people claiming disability benefits, new parents wanting to get their parental leave payments and many other taxpayers, it’s a catch-22 situation.

Dozens end up queuing outside the Social Security building early in the morning in the hope that they can be squeezed in first thing.

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Getting an appointment is so sought-after that internet cafés and dubious gestores (jack-of-all-trades agents) are charging people €10, €25, sometimes even higher figures for a cita, an illicit practice which is used for getting an appointment at other public administrations as well.

So what has caused this “collapse” at Spain’s Social Security?

Ricardo Aguirre, union representative and coordinator for the Social Security, has said that before the Covid-19 pandemic things worked “more or less well”, but problems reportedly arose with the implementation of Spain’s Minimum Vital Income.

This represented a jump of 2.5 million new welfare applications but not enough staff to meet such demands.

Aguirre also blames the bottleneck on the Seguridad Social’s ageing workforce, around 60 years on average and with many civil servants now going into retirement.

Data from Spain’s Ministry of Social Security confirms that one in three of their civil servants is older than 60 and 80 percent are over 50.

“All we’re asking for is more staff,” Aguirre concluded.

“People are going hungry because of the system,” he told Spanish radio station Cope.

Over the past two years, around 30 INSS offices have been closed and dozens more are in the process of doing so.

The Spanish government is reportedly rolling out a ‘Shock Plan’ that will result in 1,600 more civil servants being hired at the Seguridad Social, whilst stressing that since 2020 3,380 more funcionarios have been recruited.

On March 2nd, Spanish Social Security Minister José Luis Escrivá tweeted that the Seguridad Social has “lost 25 percent of its workforce in the last decade” but that his department is “reversing that situation” and that “in the coming months, thousands of civil servants and temporary workers will be hired to improve customer service for the public”.

📉 La Seguridad Social perdió al 25% de sus trabajadores en la década pasada por las políticas de recorte y austeridad

📈 Estamos revirtiendo esa situación; en los próximos meses se van a incorporar miles de funcionarios e interinos para mejorar la atención a los ciudadanos pic.twitter.com/Z6I4jdNVNv

— José Luis Escrivá (@joseluisescriva) March 2, 2023

Whether this materialises and has the desired effect remains to be seen, as these new funcionarios first have to be trained, and the fact that many of them will only be temporarily hired means that the problems could soon return.

Regardless of these promises, it does not change the fact that Spain’s bureaucratic labyrinth is a scourge for Spanish society.

Spain’s cita previa appointment system, which became fully embedded during the days of strict Covid-19 restrictions, has been kept in place as a tool for most public administrations to offer their services to citizens at the pace that they see fit, which is usually slow.

Add to this the impossibility of booking appointments and completing other processes online on subpar websites that call into question the €70 billion in EU funds Spain is receiving for its “digital transformation”, and it’s fair to say that Spanish authorities are doing a disservice to the public.

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