A worker at a public entity attached to the regional government of Aragón, Spain, drew a level-24 salary supplement for almost four years for coordinating a strategic energy efficiency plan that was never actually carried out. The Superior Court of Justice of Aragón has now ruled the worker does not have to repay the 24,833.57 euros the administration demanded, because officials failed to follow the required procedure.
The resolution that granted the supplement in July 2021 listed duties including overseeing the installation of photovoltaic panels and the renovation of climate control systems. A report by the Cámara de Cuentas de Aragón, the region's audit body, revealed in March 2025 that the project was suspended and that there was no record the employee had carried out those tasks.
Repayment order and legal challenge
In May 2025, the entity's new manager issued a resolution cancelling the supplement and ordering the worker, who holds the category of workshop chief at level 17, to repay 24,833.57 euros, a sum officials considered wrongly received between August 2021 and May 2025. The employee challenged the order in court.
Social Court No. 8 of Zaragoza sided with him in part, annulling the repayment obligation. The administration appealed, and the case reached the Superior Court of Justice of Aragón.
A supplement with no matching duties
The original ruling had already flagged a procedural flaw: the administration had not followed the steps set out in Decree 57/2023 of the Government of Aragón, which governs the recovery of undue payments. The decree requires officials to notify the person concerned, open a ten-day period for objections and offer the possibility of voluntary repayment before issuing a final decision. The director-manager skipped those steps and issued the repayment order directly.
The Superior Court of Justice of Aragón, in ruling 409/2026 of 25 May 2026, went further. Although it declined to review the facts as established, it noted that because this was a labor relationship, wages can only be claimed within the one-year limit set by Article 59 of the Workers' Statute. Even if the claim had been valid, the court said, repayment would have been limited to 6,208.39 euros, not the nearly 25,000 euros demanded.
Nullity for lack of a hearing
The decisive reason for rejecting the administration's appeal was not the time limit, however, but its failure to follow administrative procedure. The court declared the May 2025 resolution null because officials had completely omitted the prior hearing stage, in violation of Articles 48 and 107 of Law 39/2015. The ruling states that in this case the established procedure was not followed.
As a result, the court upheld the annulment of the repayment order without needing to rule on whether the worker had actually performed the additional duties. The Government of Aragón could still pursue a separate administrative review of the case, but that route no longer affects the worker's finances.
