Consideration of attendance at a wedding as permission for the related duty to reconcile family life and work.

The question raised relates to the period of leave indispensable for the fulfilment of a duty related to the reconciliation of family and working life, in particular, whether attendance as a witness of a wedding can be considered a duty of conciliation.

In the first place, the legal framework for implementation must be analysed. Article 48.j) of Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015, of 30 October, approving the consolidated text of the Law on the Basic Status of Public Employees, establishes that public officials shall have the right to a permit:

“For an indispensable time for the fulfillment of an inexcusable duty of a public or personal nature and for duties related to the reconciliation of family and work life.”

In order to define this figure, it must be taken into account that the “inexcusable duty” is configured as an indeterminate legal concept that has been defined, as contemplated in the Manual of Human Resources Management Procedures, published by Resolution of December 14, 1992 of the Secretary of State for Public Administration, as that obligation incumbent on a person whose non-compliance generates a civil, criminal or administrative responsibility; and it also extends to those duties related to the reconciliation of family and working life.

On the basis of the above, the criteria maintained by the General Directorate of the Public Service on permission for the fulfilment by officials of an inexcusable duty of a public or personal nature can be systematized in the following:

a) It must be an inexcusable duty, as "an obligation incumbent on a person whose failure to comply generates a civil, criminal or administrative liability." Civic duties such as participation in electoral processes and the exercise of the right to vote can be considered included in this concept.

(b) Apart from the cases of an inexcusable duty, the granting of the permit is optional, and the Administration must weigh the circumstances of the specific case, interpreting paragraph 48 (j) of the TREBEP in an extremely restrictive manner, and the competent body for granting the permit must assess the circumstances in each case.

c) The permit must be granted for the time indispensable for the fulfillment of the inexcusable duty and cannot be granted in a general manner.

(d) With regard to the public or personal nature of the duty to be performed, it has been determined that the voluntary assumption of private activities should not take precedence over obligations of a statutory nature that oblige the official to provide the service.

e) In any case, permission for inexcusable duty and for duties related to conciliation is characterized by two basic notes: its residual character and its duration, which will be of the time indispensable for the fulfillment of the duty. For all these reasons, it must be limited to specific and unpredictable situations, which do not extend over time, and exceptional situations, which are not repeated.

When granting this permit for a duty related to the reconciliation of family and working life, it will therefore be necessary to take into account the aforementioned criteria, as well as the applicable regulations in each specific case.

The civilistic doctrine considers that, in family law, many of the faculties, powers or rights that are established in favor of certain members of the family unit, present the mixed nature of right-duty.

Among the precepts of the Civil Code that regulate family relations of the joint consideration of articles 142 and 143 of the Civil Code, it follows that “are mutually obligated to give themselves food, understood as everything that is indispensable for sustenance, housing, clothing and medical assistance, spouses, ascendants and descendants”.

In view of the above, in the specific case raised, attendance as a witness to the wedding of a child does not seem to be in keeping with the aforementioned budgets indicated by this Board of Directors in relation to the interpretation of the content of the duty for the purposes of this precept nor does it derive from the civil regulation its component of obligation within the framework of family relations.

On the other hand, we must remember the possibility of making use of other statutory permits, such as the enjoyment of up to six days of leave for their own affairs throughout each year; the application of some period of their annual holidays that they may enjoy in minimum periods of five consecutive working days, or, alternatively, for leave for their own affairs without remuneration, whose cumulative duration may not exceed three months every two years (article 73 of the Civil Servants of the State Act of 1964).

All of the foregoing is without prejudice to recalling that, according to the regime of competences of this management center, the answers to queries issued by this general directorate are merely informative and, consequently, are not of a binding criterion, nor do they give rise to rights or expectations of law, nor imply any link with the type of procedures to which they refer. Furthermore, in the absence of a mandatory or binding nature, the bodies receiving such replies may, where appropriate, finally take a decision that does not correspond to the opinion contained therein.

The responses to queries contained in this bulletin address the issues raised in the light of the regulations in force at the time of their issuance, so that such responses may be affected by subsequent legislative changes or judicial decisions.