Spanish Politics

pedro sanchez preocupado

Sánchez goes to Rabat, Mohamed VI calls him from Gabon

Mohamed VI’s approach to Pedro Sánchez tarnishes the High Level Meeting (HLM) between Morocco and Spain, which La Moncloa expected to be “historic”. The Alaouite monarch did not receive the President of the Government yesterday on his arrival in Rabat for a bilateral summit that had not been held in this way for eight years, and limited himself to dealing with diplomatic formalities via a phone call from Gabon. Over…


sanchez

Populist Sánchez announces new increase in minimum wage (€1,080), blames employers for Spaniards’ loss of purchasing power

“Let’s talk in depth about what the two processes are that have led to the loss of purchasing power by the middle and working class in our country. The first process is that real wages have been falling for more than a decade”, the president explained yesterday in his debate with Nuñez Feijóo, leader of the opposition, adding that “big companies do not raise their employees’ wages by a single…


YolandaDiaz

The “Yolanda effect”: labour inspectors strike for the first time in their history

The Labour Inspectorate has been the latest collective to join the protests of public employees – those of employees of Social Security, the Public Employment Service, the Tax Agency, the Health Service, the lawyers of the Justice Department… -The government has failed to comply with the agreement signed in July 2021, in which it promised to solve the serious staff shortages and the lack of professional careers in the agency….


pedricola

Drifting from ‘No is No’ to ‘Yes is Yes’

J.P. Marín-Arrese | When the Spanish elections in 2016 delivered a hung Parliament, Pedro Sánchez stubbornly challenged the only potential right-wing candidacy able to set up a minority Government. His resistance led to a protracted stalemate, leaving another fresh poll as the only way out. Fearing a crushing defeat in that bid, the Socialist party ousted Sánchez and allowed Mariano Rajoy to snatch the Premiership. Only a handful of loyal…


Macron Sanchez

The Hispano-French summit in Barcelona and the schizophrenia of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya

Emmanuel Macron, President of France, the most centralist and Jacobin of European states, will be received today in the most decentralised country on the continent, Spain. The government has chosen Barcelona as the meeting place, the Barcelona mountain of Montjuic, which was the site of the 1929 Universal Exhibition and the 1992 Games, where the pro-independence supporters, led by Oriol Junqueras, await them. The ERC leader pardoned by Sánchez’s government…


pedro alertado

Former PSOE ministers “alarmed” at Sánchez government’s “desertion of constitutional commitments”

A total of 255 personalities have signed a manifesto against the government in which they criticise the recent reforms it has carried out to the Penal Code and the attempt to modify the system of election of the Constitutional Court, warning that the regime of freedoms could fail if this governmental and legislative dynamic continues. The manifesto calls on the PSOE to recover its historic project, which led it to…


inflacion super

Price controls and old, failed ideas

Fernando González Urbaneja | Keynes in the closing pages of his “General Theory…” alludes to the failed ideas of old economists nesting in the minds of new rulers as one of the avoidable mistakes. Old ideas, simple answers to somewhat more complex problems are frequent in politics, due to inconsistency, prejudice, ignorance, lack of experience. The most blatant example is the price of the shopping basket, which has undergone appreciable…


pedro sanchez

Spain: tax collection rises by 15% but deficit will rise to 4.5% of GDP according to AIReF

The Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) estimates that last year closed with growth of 5.3%, which represents an upward revision of 9 tenths of a percentage point; and that in 2023 it will be 1.6%, in this case one tenth of a percentage point more than the previous estimate. The main reason for the revision in 2022 comes from the incorporation of updated national accounting data – which revised…


Madrid Gran Via2

Ireland exposes Spain’s closed-mindedness on Wealth Tax

Luis Alcaide | The international press is talking about 100,000 Chinese investors willing to leave part of their capital in Ireland to continue their residence in the country. The attraction is simple: one million euros in investment funds or two million euros in equity investments, with a commitment to maintain them for three years. A stay of one day per year is sufficient. Chinese from Hong Kong and the Republic…


congreso

Council of State report warns of government’s legislative bungling

The Council of State has had enough of Pedro Sánchez’s Government’s way of legislating and has issued a harsh judgement in which it warns of “unjustified urgencies” that affect the quality of laws and the “control of legality and constitutionality” and warns of “guarantees” that “suffer”. The highest advisory body demands “respect” for its function and the legal framework, in the face of an “absurdity” that comes close to being…