Not even a male minister can be a woman the next day, nor does the Constitution prohibit extending budgets, as Feijóo says

BarcelonaAlberto Núñez Feijóo did not go on strike this Wednesday, but the mobilization did partially eclipse his appearance on the program El hormiguero on Antena 3. Despite achieving a 19% audience share and a not insignificant 2.5 million viewers, the figures reached by the PP candidate were far from attracting the attention of the 4.8 and 4.4 million viewers who previously followed, respectively, the interviews of Santiago Abascal (33.6%) and Pedro Sánchez (33.9%) on La revuelta.

Feijóo, mind you, played on friendly territory – Pablo Motos' ideological affinity with the right is widely known – and this allowed him to roll out his message and his platform without a direct confrontation with the host. Furthermore, he was not questioned on at least two claims that are refuted by the Spanish legal framework: one regarding the consequences of the trans law, which the PP has pledged to repeal, and another regarding the possibility or not of extending the budget.

Regarding the first issue, the conservative leader stated that he is not willing to accept that “a minister who enters at nine in the morning as a man, goes to the registry the next day and says he is a woman.” “I will not do that,” he added. While it is true that the trans law, approved by the Spanish government in 2022, allows changing sex on the national ID card without a medical report or prior hormonal treatment, the regulation prevents this change from being an automatic fact, as Feijóo indicated.

As established by article 44 of the law, the person who requests their wish to change at the Civil Registry must return within a maximum of three months, summoned by the same Registry, to ratify the decision. From then on, a maximum period of one more month is established to issue the final resolution in order to be able to change the sex and name on the DNI. The entire process, therefore, could take up to four months from the first appointment.

"Annual" accounts but extendable

This was not, however, the only falsehood told by Feijóo in the interview. In a campaign where he seeks to vindicate his profile as a manager in the face of a government he accuses of not governing, the conservative candidate stated: “An honest [Spanish] prime minister knows that the Constitution only allows for one budgetary extension”. And he added: “If, once the budgetary extension has ended, the budget is not approved, elections must be called”. What does the Spanish Constitution actually say, however?

In Article 134, the Magna Carta states that the accounts must be “annual” and that the Spanish government must present them at least three months before those of the previous year expire. And this has not been met by Pedro Sánchez's executive, whose last budgets are those of 2023. The same constitutional article, however, stipulates that in the event that the figures have not been approved “before the first day of the corresponding economic year”, they will be considered automatically extended “until the approval of the new ones”.

It is false, therefore, that the Constitution allows only “one budgetary extension”, as Feijóo claimed on El hormiguero, and even less that this forces to “call elections”. Furthermore, the same PP program for November 29 promises to promote “the necessary reforms so that a second consecutive extension” of the budgets “provokes the dissolution of the Cortes and the calling of elections”, admitting that right now the law does not provide for it this way.