Spanish Politics

elecciones generales

23-07-23: translating results of municipals to generals is an inconsistent exercise

Fernando González Urbaneja | Quite a few (including two national newspapers) have applied the arithmetic template of Sunday’s results to a general election with a result that would be favourable to the grand coalition of the left/nationalists, headed and sponsored by Pedro Sánchez. In this case the PP would be the most voted party with 140 deputies (with VOX in retreat below 20 seats) while the PSOE would remain as…


congreso diputados1

July 23rd: The sooner the better

Fernando Gonzéz Urbaneja | The expectation of a very tough six-month election campaign weighed on Sánchez’s conscience throughout the evening after the evidence of Sunday’s results. This explains why bringing forward the elections is tactical and opportunistic (in political logic), and also why Feijóo began his speech in front of the cameras with the words: “the sooner the better”. Better for the incumbent who defends the results of November 2019,…


elecciones generales

Sánchez brings forward general elections to July 23 after debacle in regional and municipal polls

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has announced that the general election will be brought forward to next July 23 after the electoral defeat suffered this Sunday by the PSOE in the regional and municipal polls. The head of the Executive has assumed this Sunday’s electoral results “in first person” and his response is that this means “submitting the popular mandate to the popular will”, as he has stated…


sanchez elections

Sánchez sinks the PSOE and Spain turns to the PP

Sánchez’s PSOE has insisted on cordon sanitaire not only with the far-right Vox, but even with the right-wing PP, with which it has refused to agree anything, while explaining the benefits of granting amnesty to the perpetrators of the attempted coup in Catalonia, of negotiating with the heirs of ETA, and with the populists of Podemos. Something that is incomprehensible to the vast majority of the electorate, even on the…


spain foreign policy

Círculo de Economía describes stagnation of Spanish economy

Fernando González Urbaneja| The government’s official discourse is unequivocal: Spain is doing well, the economy is doing very well. Vice-president Calviño comes out insistently with the concept of “leadership” to illustrate every decision of the government in economic and social matters. Gender parity means leadership; the Iberian exception is leadership; the growth of employment and GDP means leadership and so on and so forth. According to the government, Spain is…


mayores

Spain’s population now 48.2 million, 600,000 more than a year ago, all foreigners

The last year has seen the biggest population growth in 14 years, but it is all due to immigration. Residents with Spanish nationality have fallen by 13,000 and those born in Spain by 101,000. Spain has experienced in the last year the highest population growth in the last 14 years, with nearly 600,000 more inhabitants at the end of this first quarter than at the same time in 2022. As…


pensioners

Different paths on pension reform in France and Spain lead to mixed results

Jakob Suwalski (Scope Ratings | France and Spain have enacted pension reforms this year to put their pension systems on a sounder financial footing and boost employment, but doubts remain about their long-term sustainability and impact on the economy, given their similar demographic trends. The content of the reforms is also different. France (AA/Stable) aims to rebalance its pension system by raising the statutory retirement age from 62 to 64…


spanish PM pedro sanchez

Spain’s debt rising by €6,795 million per month and reaches record €1.535 trillion

According to the Bank of Spain (BdE), the debt of Spain’s public administrations as a whole increased by 1% in March compared to February, reaching a record high of €1.535 trillion, bringing it to 113% of GDP (113.2% at the end of 2022) – the BdE uses the nominal GDP of the last four quarters for this calculation. In the last 12 months, Spain’s public debt has grown by 5.6%…


pensiones playita

IEE think tank predicts Spanish businesses to pay highest contributions in Europe after Escrivá’s pension reform

Minister José Luis Escrivá’s recent pension reform will leave a public deficit of up to €22,000 million in the public coffers in 2023 alone, with its consequent negative effects on employment, growth and the competitiveness of the Spanish economy. This is what is stated in the latest report by the Institute of Economic Studies (IEE in its Spanish initials), which, under the title “La subida de las cotizaciones sociales (The…


escriva

Chaos in Social Security, unions call first strike in history

José Luis Escrivá will go down in history as the minister whose trade unions called the first ever strike in the history of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. Staff shortages, delays in appointments and in the recognition of benefits, the closure of offices, and non-compliance with the agreements signed with the trade unions. For all these reasons, the trade unions CSIF and CC.OO. have called partial strikes…