Pepita: "I do not have 8,000 euros to return, I am a disability pensioner. If I can't pay, I'll have to go to jail."

Pepita listened to the radio and realized they were talking about her. "64-year-old woman," she heard, "Supreme Court," she heard, "orphan's pension denied," she heard. "But it's me!" he said to himself. And first he felt disbelief because he was waiting for the sentence, but he thought that the Supreme Court was going to agree with him as two previous courts had done; And then she felt disappointment and then an unheard-of moodiness invaded her. All in a matter of seconds. And, when already p

Knowing that he couldn't get angry anymore, he heard the phrase:

. And the seven evils entered him because, according to

"I don't have that money, which I still don't know how much it is, but it can amount to 8,000 euros. I am a disability pensioner, they were the ones who decided to give it to me, they could have denied it to me and I would have endured it and that's it,

". They are the National Institute of Social Security (INSS). A few minutes later he will add while obsessively reviewing the hodgepodge of sentences and appeals and allegations that he has accumulated and that now remain on his table: "If I cannot pay, then I will have to go to jail. I don't pay for house or food there, allow me the irony. And then there are rabble that embezzle millions and nothing happens to them.

Pepita is not called Pepita, but she has never been publicly overexposed and although her sentence was published by the media this week, before anyone even told her anything, she prefers not to give quarters to the town crier. Her story began when on July 15, 2016, her father, who had been a mutual society official, of the former National Institute of Welfare, now the INSS, died and, weeks later, she was informed that, as has happened with other people she knows, she can apply for an orphan's pension. He retains in his memory that conversation with the INSS employee.

and she was ready to provide what the INSS application form demanded, her parents' family book, her father's death certificate, her ID, her separation sentence and the regulatory agreement, a faith of life ... "It did not appear on that form nor was I told at any time that, due to the fact of being separated, I had no option to obtain the complementary orphan's pension. On the contrary," he recalls. The amount that the INSS decided to grant her on February 1, 2017 was 105.7 euros, but it was money that she needed and that now, cumulatively, has become a trap. On September 11 of that same year, the agency reconsidered and, when it had already received 1,749.98 euros, decided to file a lawsuit requesting the annulment of the resolution.

"It may seem little, but to me those 100 euros did mean a help, to pay for electricity or to not be cold or for food," says Pepita.

. She was a civil servant and was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, OCD, arthritis, osteoarthritis, a herniated disc and cognitive impairment, among other things. At that point she had already been separated for 10 years. She had stayed with her children aged six and 11, for whose maintenance her ex-husband paid her about 600 euros, and they lived on rent. "Sometimes I would go without food to feed my children. I've always had to be demure for everything," she says. Pepita maintains that she took care of her parents. "I haven't been living with them. I got married and had children, and they were divorced.

My father, who was sick with cancer, lived alone in a studio. Like my mother, I took him to the doctors, although they didn't always want to and I wasn't going to take a leash to take them because they were very stubborn and they didn't want to come and live with me either. I did what I could," he says.

The appeal brought by the INSS before the courts is based on article 43 of the Regulation of the Mutual Insurance Company of October 24, 1953, whose wording is at least striking today: "The monthly pension of each orphan will be extinguished for males upon reaching the age of 21

The curious thing is that the INSS did not rule out the granting of aid outright because Pepita had married, but questioned it because she was separated and this implied that the marriage bond had not been extinguished. It would have been different if she had been divorced, as she had been since April 26, 2017, months after she was granted the aid. "But if we each made our lives for decades, he did not pass me any compensatory pension and we married under a regime of separation of assets ...", he replies. The Social Chamber number 4, first, and the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid, later, gave him the reason. But the INSS appealed to the Supreme Court requesting unification of doctrine, given that the High Court of Justice of the Valencian Community, in a case of similar characteristics, had knocked down the applicant's application for aid. The Supreme Court has ruled that "the purpose of the rule (the regulation of 1953) was to avoid the lack of protection of adult daughters who had dedicated themselves exclusively to the care of their parents, so that, when their parents died, they were frequently

", has argued that being separated is not the same for purposes as being divorced and has come to suggest that times have changed.

Although there are those who might think that the 1953 norm with its positive discrimination in favor of women could be comparable with some current approaches, there are also those who consider that, in today's society, with the incorporation of women into work and with current laws, it is not possible for a woman to request this type of orphan's aid. "There are feminists who think that way," she asks.

.

, replies Pepita, who, in reality, far from any disquisition only pays one main argument, that it was the INSS who decided to give her a benefit for which she had to comply with the requirements set by the INSS and that it is she now who has to pay for the burdensome error. "They could have denied me, I would have endured and that's it," he repeats.