Last week concluded with a new defeat for the Government in Parliament, which rejected the deficit path proposed by the Ministry of Finance to begin drafting a budget for 2026. This rejection foretells the impossibility of finally approving a budget in this legislature, which began in 2023 and has still not managed to pass the General State Accounts. Spain has been operating since then with the budgets approved in 2022, extended year after year by the Government, which is incapable of getting new accounts passed.
The same day that its parliamentary attempt failed once again, the Government saw a judge sent to prison—for corruption and criminal organization—the former Minister of Transport and PSOE organizational secretary, José Luis Ábalos, and his assistant, Koldo García. This came just one week after his successor as PSOE’s No. 2, Santos Cerdán, also implicated in the same scheme, was released on conditional bail.
On that day, the Leader of the Opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Secretary-General of the PP (Partido Popular), called a rally for yesterday, Sunday—without party logos—with the sole purpose of demanding that Pedro Sánchez call elections and return the voice to the people, given that he is incapable of building a majority that would allow him to pass his Bills.
At the rally—attended by 80,000 people, according to the organizers, or 40,000 people, according to the Government Delegation—Feijóo insinuated that Sánchez may also end up in jail. “Of the four who were in the Peugeot—Sánchez’s car that they used to travel across Spain and seize control of the PSOE—three already know prison. Only one is missing…” he pointed out.
However, Pedro Sánchez—whose Attorney General has already been convicted of revealing confidential information—with his wife and brother about to stand trial, and his two former Organization Secretaries awaiting trial, says he knows nothing about any of that and is willing to govern “without the assistance of the legislative branch” until the end of this term in 2027.
