Spanish court grants full-time telework to a carer and rules the employer never really negotiated
The Social Chamber of the Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Navarra has recognised a software engineer’s right to work her entire week from home in order to care for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease and a 65% disability rating. The ruling, reported from 24 August 2026, overturns a first-instance decision of Pamplona’s Social Court No. 1.
The worker and her colleagues had worked fully remotely since the COVID-19 pandemic. From May 2025 her employer required at least two days a week on site, at the request of its principal client, the Government of Navarre. She applied under Article 34.8 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores – the provision that lets workers request an adaptation of their working arrangements, including remote work, to reconcile work and family life – and was refused. The court found two problems with that refusal. First, the employer never opened the genuine negotiation process the article requires, which runs for up to fifteen days and calls for proposals and counter-proposals rather than a single written no. Second, the company had treated living with the dependent relative as a condition, and the law imposes no such requirement. Her claims for moral damages and for breach of fundamental rights were dismissed. The judgment can be appealed to the Supreme Court for unification of doctrine.
Why this matters
If you work in Spain and care for a relative, Article 34.8 gives you a route to request full-time remote work, and this ruling sets out what your employer has to do before saying no. A refusal that arrives as a flat letter, with no meeting and no alternative proposals, is procedurally defective – the fifteen-day negotiation window is an obligation, not a courtesy. You also do not have to live with the person you care for, which matters for anyone supporting a parent in another town or region.
Context
Spain regulates distance working under Ley 10/2021, which requires a written agreement setting out the terms of remote work. Article 34.8 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores sits alongside it as the reconciliation route, extended by the 2023 reforms to cover care for dependent relatives. This judgment follows a Supreme Court ruling of 1 July 2026, which held that an employer cannot cut the remote-work percentage in an individual telework agreement without each worker’s written consent. Both decisions make remote-work arrangements in Spain harder to withdraw by management instruction alone.
What to watch
A TSJ ruling binds the parties, not the whole country, and this one may go to the Supreme Court for unification of doctrine – which is where a national standard on the Article 34.8 negotiation duty would be set. For the wider picture of living and working remotely in Spain, see our Spain country guide.