The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has been defending for months that one cannot govern without General State Budgets. Pedro Sánchez has been unable to approve public accounts throughout the legislature and the current ones are for 2023. It is also not clear that he will achieve those for 2026. He is not the only one: the regional presidents of Aragon and Extremadura, from the PP, are on their way to being left without accounts for next year. But Feijóo does not apply the same yardstick to them as the Government.
“The absence of budgets accredits the greatest unrest that a Prime Minister can have,” Feijóo said this Thursday in Brussels in reference to Pedro Sánchez, whom in September he asked to “dissolve the Cortes” if he did not have accounts. At the same time, he maintained that at the regional level “the decision to maintain or interrupt a legislature” when failing to approve them “is up to the president, and he has to do it within the scope of his responsibilities, seeking the best for economic and political stability.”
The leader of the PP traveled to the community capital to the usual EPP meeting prior to the European Council. There, Feijóo did what he usually does: attack the Government. “Spain's discredit comes as a consequence of attacks on the rule of law, judicial independence and freedom of the press,” he said in a press conference in which he pointed out the “international isolation” of the Government. “Spain is increasingly within the European radical left,” and “when you are in the wrong place,” he added, “you put your country in maximum danger and risk of being isolated from major European issues.”
The popular leader repeated an idea that he has already mentioned before: that the other leaders of the European right, prime ministers and leaders of the opposition speak “with concern” about “Spanish politics.” “I have to confirm that this Government is a cocktail of corruption, sectarianism and irresponsibility that is leading Spain to irrelevance and international isolation,” he added. “Spain has stopped being reliable,” he stated. “We have the greatest international isolation in decades,” he said just a few hours after Sánchez shared dinner with the main leaders of the EU and the president of Egypt, Abdelfata Al Sisi, one of the main mediators to try to stop the massacre of Palestinians at the hands of Israel.
Feijóo went so far as to maintain that “the business and economic and political interests of Sánchez and (José Luis Rodríguez) Zapatero with the Venezuelan dictatorship” distance Spain “from the responsibility of defending democracy in Europe and Ukraine.” This same Thursday, before Feijóo's statements, Sánchez confirmed that Spain will buy weapons from the US to supply Ukraine in the face of Donald Trump's refusal to do so directly.
Extremadura and Aragón, in the hands of Vox and the “pinza”
Still in his initial intervention, Feijóo criticized the lack of public accounts. “We haven't had one for two years and we are in our third year,” he said. Almost at the same time as he was speaking, three total amendments (from PSOE, Vox and Unidas Podemos) to the accounts presented by María Guardiola were confirmed in Extremadura, which leaves his Government on the verge of staying without budgets for the second consecutive year.
It will be next Tuesday when it will be confirmed whether the Extremadura Assembly knocks down Guardiola's project. This only requires a simple majority in favor of one of the three amendments presented. Since the PSOE and the PP have the same deputies, and Unidas Podemos will support its own and the socialist party, everything will depend on what Vox does with the PSOE amendment. If you reject it, the project will be saved. But if he abstains, the project will fail. Sources close to the regional Executive assure elDiario.es that Guardiola is “prepared to bring forward elections”, although “the timing has not been decided”, they point out. That is to say, the rejection of the accounts would not imply an immediate call that would mean calling Extremadurans on the verge of the Christmas Draw to the polls.
But even if Guardiola managed to pass Tuesday's procedure, he is not sure of approving the accounts. Last year, the Government of Extremadura had to withdraw the project due to parliamentary blockade and extend the 2024 project to 2025.
The Executive of Extremadura doubts that Vox will finally knock down Guardiola's accounts in alliance with the PSOE, whom they describe as a “mafia.” Precisely, Santiago Abascal's party justifies its rejection of the president by “negotiating” with the socialists. The question they ask in Mérida is whether they will make a “clamp” with that “mafia” against the PP.
But in Vox, decisions are not made in the communities or city councils. They are taken in Madrid for all of Spain. The president of Aragón, Jorge Azcón, knows this very well, who traveled this Monday to the headquarters of the far-right party on Bambú Street in Madrid for a “personal” meeting, according to Azcón's team.
The meeting served to measure the “temperature” of the PP's relationship with Vox. The president of Aragón confirmed that it is “cold.” A day later, the regional rupture between the two was made public due to an advisor who made phil-Nazi comments on Twitter and that Vox has ceased.
The Aragon Executive is many steps behind the Extremaduran Executive. Azcón has not even approved the spending ceiling yet. Sources from his Executive justify that the central Government has not done so either, and that without knowing the state indicator it is very complicated to prepare the regional accounts.
Aragon's calendar includes approving the spending ceiling in November and the budget project in December, which would lead to a hypothetical negotiation at the beginning of 2026. But the Aragonese government is not clear about what Vox will do, whom they describe as “unpredictable.” “With what argument are you going to refuse a Budget that will be 8% higher in education and 9% higher in health?”
The excuse to break with the Government of Aragon, the phil-Nazi advisor, is “childish”, say Executive sources. They also believe that they can be penalized at the regional level, although they assume that the strategy that governs is the national one, the one dictated by Abascal and his right-hand man in the shadows, Kiko Méndez Monasterio.
They were the ones who in 2024 forced Vox's regional leaders to leave the coalition governments in several regions, including Aragon. That meant a bankruptcy with some leaderships, such as that of Juan García-Gallardo in Castilla y León or that of Alejandro Nolasco in Aragón. García-Gallardo resigned from his organizational responsibilities. And in the Azcón Government they do not rule out that part of the strategy aims to unseat Nolasco.
Feijóo assured journalists in Brussels that Azcón and Guardiola can freely decide what to do if they do not draw budgets. Regarding Sánchez, he has been pointing out for years that he should call elections because he does not have them. The leader of the PP concluded his appearance with this phrase when asked by journalists: “We are not surprised by the different measuring sticks either.”