Court allows man to join family in Spain after he was denied due to lack of income

The Supreme Court has supported a Guinean citizen to obtain temporary residence in Spain, after both the Administration and Justice prevented him from reuniting in the country with his family – wife and two children, all three Spanish – for not having the sufficient financial means to support the four of them.

The high court clarifies that, in addition to economic factors, personal and family factors must be taken into account.

The events date back to 2021, when the man, of Guinean nationality, applied to the Badajoz Immigration Office for a temporary residence card for relatives of EU citizens because he was married to a Spanish woman, mother of two children, of Spanish nationality.

The Extremaduran authorities denied it, alleging that the law requires that those who obtain a temporary residence card have, “for themselves and their family members, sufficient resources to not become a burden on social assistance in Spain during their period of residence.”

An inaccessible minimum threshold

In this case, the economic requirement imposed that the family unit earn at least 43,700 euro annually, an amount that was not obtained “even approximately” because the woman was the only source of income, which consisted of unemployment benefits and the minimum vital income.

The man appealed administratively and later judicially, but in all instances they confirmed the initial decision of the Immigration Office, repeatedly denying him temporary residence because the documentation provided by him was not sufficient to prove “a solvent economic situation.”

For this reason, he ended up going to the Supreme Court (TS), where he argued that, from the jurisprudence of both this court and the Constitutional Court, “it follows that the automatic rejection of the residence permit by the Administration as a consequence of the lack of ‘ab initio’ accreditation of the financial means of the marriage, but it is necessary to analyse all the concurrent circumstances, not only economic, but also personal, family, etc. ”

The State Attorney’s Office opposed the appeal, arguing that “the economic levels accredited by the plaintiff are far from the legally required minimums, as they are logical survival minimums.” “The fact that there are two minors does not hinder the fact that the entire family is dependent on social assistance,” they said.

Thus, they indicated that “the husband must wait until he obtains a means of work or income or until the wife’s income in Spain allows him to cover the minimum economic income required” for the family unit.

The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the TS, in a presentation by Judge Ángeles Huet, agrees with the man, reproaching that both the Administration and the lower courts “have carried out an analysis of the appellant’s request from a perspective based exclusively ¡, in the quantitative examination of the sufficiency of economic resources”.

“The essential weighing of all the circumstances, not only economic, but also personal and other circumstances, of both spouses and the family they form has thus been dispensed with,” the Supreme Court recriminates.

Specifically, the magistrates highlight among the ignored circumstances that it is a family of four members, of which three are Spanish, including two children; and that the woman “has a certificate of working life that covers more than 26 years and owns a home.”

Furthermore, the Third Chamber disgraces the administrative authorities who limited themselves to reviewing the documentation provided by the family, without carrying out “the necessary investigations.” The Administration “must adopt a proactive attitude,” they recall.

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