The Spanish Constitution, in its article 9.2, establishes that it is up to the public authorities to promote the conditions for the freedom and equality of people to be real and effective, removing the obstacles that prevent or hinder their fullness and facilitating their participation in political, social and cultural life. To this principle of effective equality, together with those of equality before the law and in access to public functions and positions, contained in articles 14 and 23, respectively, the Spanish Constitution has incorporated in 2024 a reform of article 49, which adecends language and content to affect the real and effective equality of persons with disabilities, in the exercise of their rights, and the obligation to regulate by law the special protection that this requires.

The normative efforts to develop these constitutional principles in the field of access to the public service have resulted, on the one hand, in the establishment of a reserve quota for people with disabilities equal to or greater than 33 percent, sanctioned in article 2 of Royal Decree 2271/2004, of 3 December, which regulates access to public employment and the provision of jobs for people with disabilities, and collected and progressively expanded in the royal decrees that approve public employment offers. This derives, in turn, from the very consideration of persons with disabilities contained in article 4 of the Consolidated Text of the General Law on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and their Social Inclusion, approved by Royal Legislative Decree 1/2013, of 29 November.

On the other hand, these efforts have materialized in the adoption of various adaptation measures and reasonable adjustments in the development of the tests that make up the selective processes. These adaptations were established in the aforementioned Royal Decree 2271/2004, of December 3, whose normative development would be reflected in Order PRE/1822/2006, of June 9, which establishes general criteria for the adaptation of additional times in the selective processes for access to public employment of people with disabilities.

Almost two decades later, a legal approach is necessary to the implementation and deployment, not only of the adaptation measures, but also of the reasonable adjustments already contained in the aforementioned Royal Decree 2271/2004, of 3 December, as well as a profound update of the materialization of the adaptations of times established in the aforementioned Order PRE/1822/2006, from the perspective of the constitutional reform of article 49.

The advances in the field of disability have been evident in Royal Decree 888/2022, of October 18, which establishes the procedure for the recognition, declaration and qualification of the degree of disability. This regulation revises and updates the scales to determine the degree of disability, thereby evidencing the need to modify Order PRE/1822/2006, taking into account the novelties established in the scale.

This normative mandate reflects the philosophy underlying the treatment of disability related to these selective processes, which had already been announced terminologically by Royal Decree 2271/2004, of 3 December, through the application of the concept of “reasonable adjustments”, previously exposed in the Spanish legislative order through Law 51/2003, of 2 December, on equal opportunities, non-discrimination and universal accessibility of persons with disabilities, which was subsequently the subject of a recast in the Consolidated Text of the General Law on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and their Social Inclusion. From the heterogeneous perspective implicit in the field of disability, the public sector must guarantee the right to effective equality of all persons participating in the selective processes, and provide a normative response through the incorporation of the aforementioned adjustments, which respond effectively to the numerous casuistry of disability situations.

The order will establish the general criteria for determining the adaptations of means and times, as well as making other reasonable adjustments in the exercises corresponding to the selective tests in which persons with disabilities participate.