Application of article 48(a) of the TRLEBEP.

The consultation deals with various aspects related to the enjoyment of the death permit.

Article 48 of Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015, of 30 October, approving the consolidated text of the Law on the Basic Status of Public Employees, hereinafter TRLEBEP, includes in its letter a) a permit for public officials “by serious accident or illness, hospitalization or surgical intervention without hospitalization that requires home rest of the spouse, domestic partner or relatives up to the first degree for consanguinity or affinity, as well as of any other person other than the previous ones who lives with the official or official in the same home and requires the effective care of that, five working days.

In the case of serious accident or illness, hospitalization or surgical intervention without hospitalization that requires home rest, of a relative within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity, the permit will be four working days.”

On the other hand, Article 48(a) of the TRLEBEP continues to state that public officials shall be entitled to a permit for the death of a relative in the following terms:

“(…) In the case of death of the spouse, common-law partner or relative within the first degree of consanguinity or affinity, three working days when the event occurs in the same locality, and five working days, when it is in another locality. In the case of death of a relative within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity, the permit will be two working days when it occurs in the same locality and four working days when it is in another locality.”

It has been interpreted that the days corresponding to this permit must always be consecutive and immediately subsequent to the causative act; and the permit ends when the cause that gave rise to its concession, that is, the illness or exhaustion of the days of permission granted, ceases to exist.

The death resulting from an illness, accident, hospitalization or surgical intervention without hospitalization – which has generated the beginning of the enjoyment of the corresponding permit – would entail the interruption of these and the beginning of a new death permit for the number of full days of the new permit depending on the degree of kinship of the family member and the location where his death occurs, although the maximum period of enjoyment of the previous permit has not ended.

Secondly, in relation to the beginning of the death permit, it is necessary to analyze at what time of the day the causative event occurs.

In this sense, in general, this unit understands that, if the act causing the permit occurs at the beginning of the working day or during the same, so that the public employee does not go to his place of work that day or must leave it during the same, it is understood that this working day must be counted as the first working day of the permit.

However, if the causative event occurs outside the working day, so that it does not affect the provision of services on that day, it is understood that the permit would begin to compute the next working day.

For its part, if the day on which the causative event occurs is not working, Judgment 148/2018 of 13/2/2018, Social Chamber of the Supreme Court, points out that the leave for the death of a family member (among others) must begin to be counted from the first working day that follows.

For the case under consultation, we are told that the death occurs on the afternoon of a working day (in which he is enjoying the permit for serious illness by that same family member).

This is because, in addition to the other considerations, only from the moment of death is it necessary to carry out the appropriate procedures required for the burial; that is, during the morning of the day of death it was not necessary to carry out any procedure in relation to the death, which would give virtuality to the object of the permit in question.

Finally, it should be recalled that the Resolution of 14 April 2026 of the State Secretariat for the Civil Service, which provides instructions on the working hours and hours of staff working in the service of the General Administration of the State and its public agencies, in its paragraph 14 referring to the computation of permits, states the following:

“14.2 For the computation of the permits whose duration is established in working days, the regime of time and hours that corresponds to the holder of the permit will be taken into account.

In this sense, on Saturdays, Sundays or holidays, they will only count when they are part of the day and time that corresponds to the holder of the permit.”

It should be noted that this permit, in its wording given by Royal Decree-Law 5/2023, of 29 June, transposes the provisions of Article 6 of Directive (EU) 2019/1158 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 20 June 2019, with regard to the permit for carers, which links in its result of granting a five-working day permit for these people.

Therefore, the new wording of Article 48(a) should be understood to regulate a leave for working days in its entirety, with the aim of establishing the fork provided by the previous regulation for the event of an accident and serious illness at the upper end, with the inclusion of the cohabiting person (five working days for family members of the first degree and cohabiting persons and four for family members of the second degree), in order to proceed to the correct transposition of the aforementioned Directive, having to take into account in any case the nature of the leave in relation to the context, the legislative background, and the social reality of the time in which they are to be applied, taking into account essentially its spirit and purpose.

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.