Congress postpones the arms embargo vote because it falls on the October 7 anniversary.

MadridCongress will not vote on the decree of arms embargo against Israel this Tuesday to avoid it coinciding with the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on October 7The vote has been postponed for a day and will take place tomorrow after several parliamentary groups expressed their discomfort at coinciding with this "sensitive" date. One of them, Junts, has requested this postponement from the speaker of the lower house. A request that Socialist Francina Armengol has accepted. The PP, for its part, had asked to go even further and move both the debate—which is being held this afternoon—and the vote to next week. In this case, the PSOE opposed it, and ultimately a minimal modification was imposed that does not entail changing the agenda. The members of the judiciary—who agreed with the PP proposal—have agreed.

The decision to change the voting date, communicated by Armengol to the board of spokespersons prior to the start of the plenary session, did not generate a confrontation at the meeting, although ERC spokesperson Gabriel Rufián did express that he did not see it as necessary, according to parliamentary sources. However, the outcome of the vote is still unclear, and the approval of the measures against Benjamin Netanyahu's government is not guaranteed. The main stumbling block is Podemos's reluctance, which remains uncertain about its voting intention. The leader of the Lilac Party, Ione Belarra, took a harsh stance against the Spanish government at a press conference on Tuesday and demanded that it withdraw the text because she considers it insufficient.

The PSOE spokesperson in Congress, Patxi López, defended the government and said he hopes that "all the groups that denounce genocide will vote in favor, because nothing else would be understood." Other groups within the plurinational majority that also consider the scope of the decree insufficient, such as EH Bildu and the BNG, have appealed to "responsibility" for its approval and to be able to strengthen it later during its processing as a bill. "No one who believes in international law would understand a vote against it," said the spokesperson for the Aberzales (Spanish People's Party), Mertxe Aizpurua, also at a press conference. As for the PP, they have also not clarified how they will vote, although their parliamentary spokesperson, Ester Muñoz, said that the law aims to "cover up the corruption" of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) and questioned whether it would stop Israel from "massacre[ing]" the population of Gaza. "[Donald] Trump's peace plan will help more," Muñoz said.