Six months is the time a patient must wait to have a first visit to a traumatologist in Catalonia. Javi López (Figueres, 36 years old) was dismissed less than a year ago due to traumatic injuries. López is dedicated to loading and unloading heavy materials, such as mattresses and household appliances, but the processes to obtain an accurate diagnosis in both cases have led to accumulating up to new low months. “One day I woke up with terrible pain while driving. I couldn’t walk. When I went to the Primary Care Emergency Center (CUAP), no one hid me and told me to rest,” he explains. “After a month and a half, the pain remained the same. It took another month after a scan which ended up diagnosing me with a simple cyst. If I had hubies detected before, the hubies had not been working for five months,” he laments.
Official statistics from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration are not broken down by population type, but they give an idea of how the incidence of temporary disabilities has increased in recent years. The prevalence of low income per 1,000 workers protected by the social security system (including those treated by the Collaborative Mutual Social Security System, which is the majority, but also those treated by the Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social and the Instituto Social de la Marina) is the indicator that, according to experts, best reflects the weight of low income at each moment.
Until September 2025, the prevalence of losses due to municipal hazards was 52.02 per 1,000 workers in Catalonia, while in Spain it was 53.19. With an average duration of 29.45 days in Catalonia and 43.16 days throughout Spain. Compared to data from 2019, the year before the pandemic, the indicator increased sharply: that year the prevalence of temporary disabilities was 36.37 per 1,000 workers in Catalonia and 34.09 in Spain, and the average duration was 27.46 days in Catalonia and 38.6 in Spain.
Data from the AMAT association, which represents the collaborating mutual societies of Social Security, show the weight of losses due to traumatic causes in relation to the total. With the data of depressions treated by mutuas, in Spain in 2024 there will be 5.92 million processes of temporal incapacity due to common contingencies, of which 1.29 million (and 21.8%) correspond to traumatological pathologies. In Catalonia, of the 1.53 million cases initiated, 286,528 were due to traumatic problems (18.7%).
If we decide on cases of temporary incapacity for professional contingencies that arise during work, the percentage is even higher: of the 680,898 cases processed in mutual insurance companies, 594,419 are due to trauma pathologies, or 87.30%.
López’s second diagnosis was more alarming. After an accident while unloading the van, the CUAP informed him that he only had his back supported, but that he could not remain standing. “They sent me back to sleep and gave me painkillers. After a month, the pain didn’t go away. When I came back to the hospital, they sent me for an X-ray which took three weeks later. I then went there when the doctors arrived and I had a very compressed vertebra which prevented me from working for another three months,” he reports.
The greatest incidence in the context of professional contingencies is also found in the data on work accidents. According to the Observatori del Treball i Model Productiu, which depends on the Generalitat, in Catalonia, last year there were more than 80,000 work accidents, of which more than 77,100 correspond to traumatic causes. The vast majority of these were minor accidents, but over the past year, 40 deaths have accumulated due to workplace accidents due to traumatic causes.
In its report, the AMAT association regrets the long waiting time for the treatment of traumatological illnesses, and deplores that to boost the public health system and allow the early return of workers, these illnesses are treated in mutualist institutions. This is a long-standing complaint from business owners, and for a year the autonomous communities have been able to sign collaboration agreements with mutual societies to deal with the diagnosis and treatment of these pathologies — always with the mediation of the INSS and whenever the public health doctor deems it appropriate and patient access —, but only three communities have signed an agreement of this type. Catalonia is one of them.
AJ, who has not revealed his identity to avoid work problems, suffered a meniscus injury while playing sports that forced him to miss work for two weeks. When you return to work in a metallurgical factory in Barcelona, while waiting to have a magnetic resonance imaging scan, you feel a repercussion that makes the wheel worse. “I was reinstated to my job without ever having to take the tests. The same week I was accepted into the job and the injury lasted longer, which led me to extend the base for another five months after a month of delay to operate while driving,” he explains.
The president of Pimec, Antoni Cañete, one of the most active in the fight against absenteeism at work, recognizes that waiting lists are one of the problems linked to this phenomenon. “It’s a problem with the system, which must be effective and efficient, but there is also a problem with the abusive use of low-staffed jobs. The situation of absenteeism is untenable,” he emphasizes. “The person is the most important, and it can’t be that there is a six-month delay in a visit, or that the tests are expanded. That’s an anomaly,” he says.
In absolute figures, low labor costs are unlikely to increase in Catalonia between 2019 and 2024, from 1,597,451 to 2,228,718, with the economic cost for public administration falling from 137.5 million euros to 243, according to social security data. A phenomenon which is also conditioned by the increase in affiliates.
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