The coalition government led by Pedro Sánchez has decided to implement a 4% pay rise for next year, above the 3.5% planned for civil servants and MPs. With this, Prime Minister Sánchez’s annual salary will be 90,010.20 euros a year, which means a monthly salary of 7,500 euros. The Ministry of Finance agreed with unions Comisiones Obreras and UGT a salary increase for civil servants of up to 3.5% in…
The Council of Ministers on Tuesday approved the draft General State Budget for 2023 agreed by the coalition partners. The accounts are based on a new macroeconomic framework that reduces the GDP growth forecast for 2023 from 2.7% to 2.1%, on a record expenditure ceiling of 198.221 billion euros. Current spending grows by 6.9% (18.3% if one takes into account that refugee aid measures are now supported here). Meanwhile, so-called…
J.P. Marín-Arrese | The ruling coalition in Spain faces a dim prospect in the coming elections next year. According to the polls, the main Opposition party, bolstered by its new leadership, is poised to snatch a comfortable victory. It seems even close to securing an overall majority, counting on a helping hand from the extreme right and some minor partners. To ward off the danger of a crushing defeat, the…
Fernando Gonzalez Urbaneja | I don’t want to assign the role of Richard III in the Spanish political drama, but the main contenders, Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, although with different intensity, are doomed to opt for whatever it takes to succeed and fail, like Richard III. The recent debate (combat) in the Senate between the two politicians with pretensions to rent La Moncloa showed desperation, obsession, determination to…
J.P. Marín-Arrese | The UK has delivered a humbling lesson to the Spanish government as its forceful attempts to downgrade the former King Juan Carlos’s attendance at late Queen Elisabeth’s funeral have backfired. The Foreign Minister stepped in, eagerly underlining that State representation confined itself to the sovereign and himself, even consigning Queen Letizia to oblivion in his hasty statement. His frantic efforts to portray Don Juan Carlos as an…
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, defended, on Wednesday, the former presidents of Andalusia Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán after their conviction in the ERE case. Pedro Sánchez believes that “they are paying for the sins of others” , and avoided saying anything on “hypothetical future actions” such as the granting of a pardon. In a press conference with the Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, Sánchez stressed…
Fernando Gonzalez Urbaneja | Economics textbooks have a heading to add to the chapter on inflation: the one dictated by Dr Pedro Sánchez before Parliament. After warning that inflation (10% annual rate) is the most worrying problem for the government, he deployed a series of “anti-inflationary” measures, among them, new taxes for banks and energy companies on extraordinary profits . The president spoke about his concern about the influence of…
“Sánchez is capable of competing with Johnson in his race of compulsive liars” says the former editor of El País. Hours before the debate on the State of the Nation begins in the Spanish Parliament, Juan Luis Cebrián, the former first editor of the well-known “government newspaper” – El País – has published a very harsh article (“Las cenizas de la Nación”). In it he points out, for example, that…
Several historic leaders of the PSOE have signed a statement against the Democratic Memory bill and the agreement reached with EH Bildu, considering it a “distortion” of the historical truth by extending the “suspicious period” of the dictatorship until 1983. The letter, issued by the Association for the Defence of the Values of the Transition, is signed by former socialist leaders such as the former presidents of the Senate, Javier…
The capacity of some political leaders to “ride contradictions” (Pablo Iglesias dixit) knows no limits: Yolanda Díaz, second vice-president of the Government, Minister of Labour, the designated successor of Pablo Iglesias at the head of the Spanish extreme left, presents tomorrow Sumar, her new political platform. And for the presentation she asks the leaders of the political left – including her colleagues in Unidas Podemos – not to attend the…