Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s comments on sick leave payments triggered a political storm, prompting the Partido Popular (PP) to clarify its leader’s position. Speaking at a business event in Bilbao, Feijóo described workplace absenteeism as a “cancer” and questioned collective agreements that allow employees to receive full pay while absent. He also criticised practices in public administration and called for reform of the temporary-incapacity system, saying changes could proceed “with or without” agreement from unions and employers.
Juan Bravo, the PP’s deputy secretary for the Economy, later said in an interview with La Sexta that Feijóo’s criticism was directed at fraud, not people who are genuinely ill. “No one in the PP wants cancer patients or the genuinely ill to receive less,” Bravo said, setting out the party’s position that sick workers should remain protected. The PP has since stressed that any changes should come through social dialogue.
The distinction matters because Spain’s absenteeism figures cover different kinds of absence and do not, by themselves, establish that a sick-leave claim is fraudulent. Rosa Santos, director of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations’ (CEOE) Employment, Diversity and Social Protection Department, said in October 2026 that an average of 1.7 million people were absent from work each day in 2025, around 1.5 million of them on temporary-incapacity leave for common contingencies. The CEOE put the number of leave spells recorded during the year at 9.2 million, equivalent to 7.2% of the active population, excluding permits and leave of absence. Santos called for tighter checks on common-contingency leave and also pointed to waiting lists as a factor that can prolong absences.
Separate measures show the scale of the issue, though they count different aspects of absence. The Adecco Group Institute put Spain’s absenteeism rate at 7.68% at the end of 2025, a high in its historical series, and estimated that each worker lost an average of 10.9 working hours a month. Another sectoral estimate put the rate at 7.88% in the fourth quarter and the annual cost of absenteeism at €59.109 billion. These broad figures include multiple causes of absence; they are not counts of proven fraudulent claims. Bravo, meanwhile, cited a €33 billion estimate for the cost of sick leave, more than double its level in previous years, and compared it with the budget of the Community of Madrid. He also said half of all sick leave was concentrated among 10% of workers and cited a Monday peak of 1.7 million people off work, twice the Friday figure.
Under the ordinary rules for temporary incapacity due to common illness, full salary is not automatically paid throughout the leave. No benefit is payable for the first three days; the employer bears the payment obligation from the fourth through the fifteenth day. After that, the benefit is paid by the National Social Security Institute or a collaborating mutual insurance society. Collective agreements may top up the statutory benefit to full pay. Temporary incapacity is a legally defined status for a person unable to work while receiving healthcare through the Social Security system, and the ordinary maximum duration can reach 545 days, subject to the conditions set by law.
Health-related absence also includes large numbers of documented cases involving mental health. Figures cited from annual reports by Catalonia’s health department, Salut, recorded 194,953 mental-health-related leave spells in 2025, or 8.8% of common-contingency leave. Days of temporary incapacity linked to mental health exceeded 15 million, around a quarter of all days on leave. The figures distinguish common contingencies from occupational ones, keeping work-related health problems separate from genuine illness and suspected fraud.
The PP says the system is not functioning as intended and has pointed to the government’s creation of a working group on the issue. The party supports reducing payments only in cases of proven fraudulent absence, not for workers who are genuinely ill. Bravo has said its priority is to protect sick employees while tackling abuse. The CEOE, for its part, has called for more intensive checks on common-contingency leave, while also identifying the duration of medical processes and waiting lists as part of the wider problem. Any change to temporary-incapacity rules would require legislation and social-security measures, not political statements alone.
Debates over workplace conditions and absenteeism are not new in Spain. In a related development, a court in the Canary Islands recently ordered Social Security to compensate a civil servant for stress caused by understaffing, highlighting ongoing challenges in managing workplace risks and absences. Details of that case can be found in this report on compensation for staff stress in La Palma.
The PP’s clarification has narrowed the stated target of its proposal to fraudulent leave, while leaving open the question of how checks could be strengthened without weakening protection for people who are ill. The debate now centres on balancing worker rights with public resources while addressing unjustified absence. The party says any reform should protect genuinely sick employees and proceed through dialogue.
