Of the 179 municipalities in the Community of Madrid, 114, almost 64% of the total, are governed by the PP. The percentage increases if we focus on the 37 with the largest populations. 70% of the municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants are tinged blue. The Isabel Díaz Ayuso effect caused the left to even lose some of its strongholds in southern Madrid, traditionally called the red belt, in the last local elections of 2023, as is the case with Móstoles and Leganés –second and fourth most populated cities–. The popular party also snatched Alcalá de Henares and Alcobendas from the PSOE –third and tenth, located to the east and north, respectively.

The possibility of former president Carles Puigdemont returning to Catalonia in the summer is fading. The reason is that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has not yet communicated the date on which it will rule on the amnesty. The usual practice of this body is to give a month's notice, so that the Constitutional Court (TC) no longer expects a resolution on the preliminary questions regarding embezzlement before June. This European justice calendar complicates the prospects of the TC being able to resolve the Junts leader's appeal before the August holidays, as confirmed to ARA by various sources from the Constitutional Court.

Not even a week after the PP and Vox reached an agreement in Extremadura, the two formations are following the same path in Aragon and have also reached a pact to invest the popular Jorge Azcón. The popular party and the far-right party announced the understanding this afternoon in a joint appearance by Azcón and the Vox spokesperson in the Aragonese Cortes, Alejandro Nolasco. The staging is a carbon copy of what they followed in Extremadura to present a policy in line with the Extremaduran one, in which national priority in public policies has been the keystone. But in this case, the furious anti-Catalanism that has characterized the right in the region has reappeared, and this makes it understandable that there is an essential point that includes the defense of "freedom against indoctrination" with two star measures: "freeing Aragon from the imposition of Catalan" and initiating the "abolition of the Aragonese Institute of Catalan". That is, the PP and Vox have agreed to eliminate Catalan in Aragon.

The discursive cession to Vox in Extremadura, with the acceptance of the "principle of national priority", has borne the expected fruit for the PP. After a first attempt frustrated a month and a half ago, the popular candidate, María Guardiola, has been invested as president this Wednesday with the votes of the popular party and the far-right, which doubled its results in the regional elections of December 21. "As what the polls say does matter to me, I know that this project is only possible with Vox [...] That is why I will not apologize for governing with those who represent an important part of Extremadura," the president of Extremadura emphasized, who revalidates the position she has held since 2023. However, at the same time, in Congress, the popular party has rejected a motion from Vox defending the principle of "national priority" for access to public policies, understood as the differentiation between national and non-national when receiving aid, an interpretation that the PP rejects.

Why can a man freely decide when to destroy frozen sperm and a woman cannot do so with her eggs? This anomaly, established in current law, was debated this Tuesday afternoon in Congress, which will take a first step to eliminate this "discrimination". An initiative by the PSOE that the plenary will take into consideration and which proposes to equate the regulation on the cryopreservation of oocytes to that of semen in such a way that women are not forced to preserve them throughout their fertile lives. Today, the only way to destroy them is by obtaining the opinion of two experts stating that the woman can no longer become pregnant. On the other hand, a man can decide at any time and without any oversight if he wants to dispose of his semen deposited in biobanks. Vox is the only party that has positioned itself against the proposal.

In an era when international politics is at the forefront, Spanish leaders seek godfathers abroad to strengthen themselves internally and try to win the electoral game. The Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, is the one who has the most blatant strategy in this regard, by establishing himself as one of the leaders of the world left this weekend in Barcelona, but also the rest of the political spaces go beyond borders to seek references. These days, the PP and Vox have made a demonstration with the reception of María Corina Machado – whom they use to attack the Spanish government – and a few days ago it was Viktor Orbán's defeat in Hungary that marked Spanish politics.

A "burst of color" on fourteen meters of canvas welcomes the major exhibition dedicated to the painting of Teresa Vall Palou (Lleida, 1951). More than sixty works by the Lleida artist, practically all of them large format, have been since the end of February – and will continue to be until the beginning of May – the main attraction of the program at the Tomás y Valiente Art Center (CEART) in Fuenlabrada. Located about 20 kilometers from the main museums in the heart of Madrid, the CEART is "a reference center for the south of the Community", with a relevant trajectory in the field of museography focused on contemporary art. "Very many Catalan artists have had their first major exhibition here instead of in Madrid," explains to ARA the art director of CEART, Juan Carlos Moya, surrounded by the main compositions of the last ten years of Vall Palou's artistic production, grouped under the title Chromatic Atmospheres.

While Pedro Sánchez received Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, with military honors in Barcelona, at the PP headquarters in Madrid an alternative reception with honors was held for the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. Dozens of popular affiliates, party officials, other anti-Chavista activists, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo himself gathered at the entrance of the headquarters on Génova street to applaud Machado's arrival. The new Nobel Peace laureate, in full European tour, has allowed herself to be courted by the PP – in the afternoon she also has a meeting with the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal – while turning her back on the Spanish government, with whom she has preferred not to meet.

The controversial reaction of Vox deputy José María Sánchez García, who confronted the presidency of Congress during the debate of a non-law proposal (PNL) on historical memory, has put the focus on the deterioration of parliamentarism. "What happened is not an anecdote. It is a way of doing politics based on noise, intimidation, and disregard for the basic rules of democratic coexistence." This is the conclusion drawn from this episode by the parties of the plurinational majority, as stated in an institutional declaration promoted this Wednesday by the PSOE. Various parliamentary sources from the parties that have signed it, consulted by ARA, agree in diagnosing that the presence of Vox in the lower house has caused a change in parliamentary life, which worsens year after year. The declaration could not be read at the end of Wednesday's plenary session because Vox, PP, and UPN refused to sign it.

Adamantly defending Spain's traditional alliances while the military and dialectical escalation of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu increases puts the PP in a complicated situation. Alberto Núñez Feijóo has so far avoided confrontation with the United States and Israel even when they have attacked one of the pillars of Spanish conservatives, such as Catholicism. The Popular Party remained on the sidelines when the Israeli government vetoed Palm Sunday mass in the Holy Land, and now that the President of the USA has targeted Pope Leo XIV, Feijóo has been caught between the two.

"Being anti-Zionist in Israeli society is basically like a betrayal. It puts you at odds with friends and family. It's going against your own identity. They see you as crazy." Nadav Finebooch, of Israeli nationality but residing in Madrid since 2023, thus summarizes for ARA the contradiction and ostracism generated by being a dissident in Israel and raising a voice against the "genocide" perpetrated by Benjamin Netanyahu's government. Finebooch, far from a community in which he felt "as if I were living inside George Orwell's book1984, has joined a group of Israelis established in Spain who are calling on the international community to sanction Israel. Although they celebrate that Pedro Sánchez's government has so far championed the opposition to Netanyahu with the Gaza war, they ask him to act even more "forcefully".

The day before the trial of the Kitchen case began at the National Court, the PP announced that its strategy was to create a firewall. "Feijóo is not the Kitchen," party sources proclaimed. This has been the popular party's approach throughout the first and second days of the oral hearing. The argument that current PP leaders repeat both in public and in private is that it is a matter related to the past, which has absolutely nothing to do with Alberto Núñez Feijóo and the current popular president's team. The person in charge of verbalizing this on Tuesday was Alicia García, spokesperson in the Senate, in a press conference focused on attacking Pedro Sánchez for the alleged corruption surrounding him. "We are talking about a case from more than ten or fifteen years ago, but today a case from fifteen minutes ago from the PSOE is being judged. And those that remain," she defended.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo's frustration at not being able to govern this legislature is palpable in the Senate. Given the impossibility of implementing his program, in the last two years the popular leader has used the upper house as a kind of showcase for what Spain governed by him would be like. Although the PP's absolute majority there is sterile because Congress blocks legislative initiatives, far from standing still and throwing in the towel, the popular parliamentary group has approved about forty laws in the upper house. For now, they cannot be applied, but from the Senate, the popular party members media-wise claim them as the alternative to Pedro Sánchez and propose the work done on these draft laws as a basis from which to start working when Feijóo arrives at Moncloa. A scenario in which they are confident from 2027 onwards. This is a portrait of what an eventual Spain governed by the PP would be like according to the initiatives they have proposed in the Senate:

The Spanish government, the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), and the Spanish Conference of Religious have signed this Monday, at the Ombudsman's office, the protocol to compensate victims of sexual abuse and pedophilia. It is the system to recognize and repair individuals for whom the judicial route is no longer possible and which had been pending detailing since early January, when a more generic pact was reached to implement it. Finally, no indicative compensation figure has been included in the text.

This 2026 one of the most iconic buildings in the center of Madrid celebrates its centenary. It is the headquarters of the Círculo de Bellas Artes (CBA), a private, non-profit cultural institution that claims to be a "reference of freedom and independence" in the capital of the State. In recent years, it has focused on "opening up to citizens" with initiatives such as the climate shelter —they have set up a green and free space that last summer was used by 60,000 people to protect themselves from the heat; the Festival of Ideas, which brings philosophy to the streets, or the City and Science Biennial, organized in collaboration with the Barcelona City Council.

The cultural battle is a concept that in the last decade has been inherent to the rise of the global far-right. In Spain, Vox has been fighting it for years to try to change the debate framework on issues such as feminism, environmentalism or LGTBI rights and to normalize discourses that were not previously acceptable. An example of this is the media coverage that the euthanasia process of Noelia Castillo has had this week and, in this context, the statements of the Madrid Minister of Health, Fátima Matute, talking about the importance of institutions also focusing on "healing the soul" are striking. As the elections in the Community of Madrid, scheduled for 2027, approach, its president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and her executive are increasingly adopting elements of the cultural war against progressivism. Ayuso has recently asked her supporters to exercise extreme vigilance to avoid losing the absolute majority, with an eye on Vox.

It was no longer decisive, but their vote was one of the last unknowns in the vote on the decree with tax cuts for the Iran war. The PP plans to abstain, according to popular sources. However, Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party still leaves the door open to a vote in favor if there is a last-minute turn by the Spanish government. What should happen? That Pedro Sánchez's executive commits during the debate, which will take place this Thursday, to deflating personal income tax. For the PP, the package of measures approved last Friday by the Council of Ministers is still "insufficient". However, they will not vote against it because it "includes part of its proposal for tax cuts".

Three months after the elections in Extremadura, it seems the People's Party (PP) and Vox are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The two parties met this Wednesday in Mérida to finalize the agreement that would allow María Guardiola to be sworn in and re-elected as regional president. Speaking after the meeting, both parties affirmed that there is "harmony" and expressed optimism, although they cautioned that there are still "issues to be resolved" before the pact can be considered complete.

There is no session in the Congress of Deputies that does not involve a clash between Junts and Esquerra. The same leader of the Republicans, Gabriel Rufián, admitted this Wednesday while intervening in the appearance of the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, on the war in Iran. From the lectern, Rufián said the following: "Some Catalan journalists are already writing the chronicle of Rufián attacks Junts, well yes. I don't care because fortunately people have other means of communication to know what is happening here, Junts lies and there are less than 30 days to tell people about it," he sentenced, alluding to the Junts' opposition to validating the decree that extends the Spanish government's rental contracts and which must be voted on in the Congress of Deputies within a month at the latest. "Who do you work for? Don't you have any voters whose rental contract is ending? Why such a self-harming vote? Do you have a real estate company?" he asked the Junts bench. "If you overturn this decree, I wish you years of political ostracism and I promise you I will try very hard for it to be so. You do terrible harm to the people of this country," he concluded.

There isn't a session in the Congress of Deputies that doesn't involve a clash between Junts and Esquerra. The leader of the Republicans, Gabriel Rufián, himself admitted this on Wednesday while speaking during the appearance of the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, regarding the war in Iran. From the podium, Rufián said the following: "Some Catalan journalists are already writing the story 'Rufián attacks Junts,' well, yes. I don't care because, fortunately, people have other means of communication to find out what's happening here. Junts is lying, and there are just under 30 days left to tell people," he declared, alluding to Junts' opposition to ratifying the decree extending rental contracts issued by the Spanish government, which must be voted on in the Congress of Deputies within a month at the latest. "Who do you work for? Don't you have any voters whose rental contracts are about to expire? Why this self-destructive vote? Do you own a real estate company?" he asked the Junts party members. "If you overturn this decree, I wish you years of political ostracism, and I promise I will work very hard to make sure it happens. You are doing a terrible disservice to the people of this country," he concluded.