Transferring National Insurance payment from UK to Spain related to Pensions

I have been living in spain since sept 2000 and have been autonomo since then.

Previous to that I was living in UK and was working on and off in and out of the UK so was paying National Insurance etc for appx 10+ years.

I am getting on a bit and need to start thinking about my pension and I read somewhere that in order to qualify for a Spanish pension then I need to have paid at least 15 years into Spanish Social Security.

I intend to live out my years in Spain as I have married a Spanish lady here and we have two children so wont be returning to the UK.

My thinking is that if I have paid 10+ years in the UK and then 10+ years here in Spain then I should be okay but of course I am no expert at these things so needed to start finding out.

So I think my questions are:

1) Can i transfer my UK contributions over to Spain?
2) How can I find out what I have paid in the UK?

Does anyone know the answers to these questions?
 

hi,

dont know the answer to question 1.

but if you ring the pensions office at newcastle

and ask for a pension forecast it will give you

the amount you will receive when you retire.

Hi Craig - I asked this question at a UK consul roadshow a couple of years ago, as I am autonomo as well, but don´t intend to work the 15 years in Spain which is needed to qualify for a Spanish pension.

They said that my 30 years in the UK would be added to any years here, so the 15 year rule did not apply.  Once you have made any payments into the Spanish system, then Spain will process your pension, but the UK government will pay Spain the part that they owe you, and Spain will then top up.

As Formentera Costa said, you can get a UK pension forecast which will show what they will give you, but I don´t know the mechanism for making the claim.  They keep changing the age where you can claim anyway, so it is always worth asking them where you stand and at what age are you eligible to start claiming.

This is a really useful Europe-wide website to help in various matters, including retirement and pensions:

world wide web. europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/index_en

I had a query recently concerning my forthcoming pensions. Although the website is quite expansive on the subject I struggled to find the answer to my specific query. So I sent them an email and received a response which totally answered all my concerns. It did take about 10 days to come, but when it did it was in the form of a scanned letter and really informative.