The investigation into the Koldo case at the National Court has a new offshoot that has erupted in the middle of the November 29th pre-campaign. The Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard launched an operation this Thursday that has resulted in six arrests within the framework of a new secret piece of the case led by Judge Ismael Moreno. At the request of the investigator of the Koldo case, UCO agents searched the home of former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos in Valencia as well as other premises in Madrid, Seville and Cordoba. The details of the new investigation have not transpired, although it is known that it affects Adif. Sources from the railway infrastructure manager explained that UCO agents appeared at Adif's offices with a request for information.

At the gates of the November 29th general elections, the family of Guillem Agulló remains waiting for the Spanish government to move to "repair the damage" and to "honor the memory" of the young anti-fascist and pro-independence activist murdered 33 years ago at the hands of the extreme right. In April of this year, the activist's parents and sisters requested that the Ministry of the Interior recognize him as a victim of far-right terrorism. As of now, Fernando Grande-Marlaska's department has only requested two reports, from the Civil Guard and the Castelló Court, to evaluate it. "The first has already spoken out and denies us the right to the distinction," they denounce. At this point, Guillem Agulló's family has sent a letter to Grande-Marlaska and the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, to demand that they take the step "before it is too late".

Until September 26, 2023, the day of the failed investiture debate of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in Congress, Óscar Puente (Valladolid, 1968) was practically unknown to the general public. Pedro Sánchez's assignment to this rank-and-file PSOE deputy, former mayor of Valladolid, to give the reply to the PP leader catapulted him media-wise. Especially due to his provocative tone and the pungent content of his speech. That day, articles proliferated explaining who Puente was, the surprise of the day, who soon took on the labels of "scourge" and "battering ram" of the right, and became one of the socialists most hated by the populars. An animosity that has been increasing during the legislature following his appointment as Minister of Transport, a position he has combined with acting as a doberman for the head of the Spanish executive against the attacks of the opposition.

A week before the general strike, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has issued a warning to its organizers. "Before it was incomprehensible, 69 deaths later it is a grave error," the PP leader stated this Tuesday at an informative breakfast organized by Europa Press. Feijóo has directly asked the unions to call off the protest on November 11, and has warned them that, if they maintain it, "they will tie their image to Pedro Sánchez." CCOO, the UGT, and the Tenants' Union have ignored the call and will maintain the general strike, which, for the Popular Party president, after the Toledo railway accident, is even more untimely. "I do not question the constitutional right to strike, but rather the sense of timing," he said. The strike was called due to the housing crisis, which has been relegated in the media to the background by the tragedy on the Madrid-Andalusia high-speed line.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo addressed his supporters this Monday to set the party's course for the pre-campaign following the Toledo train accident. From now on, "management" will become the central message of the PP, which sees how the latest polls, published by three private media outlets, improve the conservatives' prospects. "Management" is the word that was written on the lectern from which he spoke and was the axis of his speech, in which he positioned himself as the guarantor of a Spanish government that acts with "rigor" and from "experience". "I claim seriousness, which is a form of respect," he stressed. The conservative leader thus distanced himself from the "frivolity" he attributes to Pedro Sánchez and also from the "arrogance" of Santiago Abascal, who, unlike the president of the PP and the rest of the candidates for November 29th, did not interrupt the pre-campaign during the days of mourning for the tragedy on the high-speed line that left at least 69 victims dead.

At the beginning of this week, the PP planned to focus its pre-election speech on security. Hence, on the day of the Toledo train accident, Alberto Núñez Feijóo was in Barcelona. The Popular Party had called the media at noon to Plaça Urquinaona to visit the shops affected by the looting. The message, which he had already deployed the day before from Madrid, was that only a Popular Party government could guarantee "order" and firmness in the face of unrest. However, the crash between the AVE and the Iryo on the Madrid-Andalusia line changed all plans. Feijóo rushed back to the Spanish capital and at 4:15 p.m. summoned the press to the party headquarters on Génova Street to react to the tragedy.

The serious railway accident in Toledo this Wednesday, added to the one in Adamuz nine months ago –on the same high-speed line– "is not acceptable for a country like Spain." This is the assessment Pedro Sánchez has made of the incident that has caused the death of at least 68 people. From the scene of the events, the President of the Spanish government has promised "firmness" in case there have been any negligence or security failures, although he has avoided pointing out possible culprits for now. However, the new tragedy on the route between Madrid and Andalusia puts the Spanish government and, especially, the PSOE, which is the party that holds jurisdiction in railway matters, against the ropes. In fact, a month before the general elections on November 29, the eyes of the PP, Vox, and the Broad Front have focused on the head of the executive and the Ministry of Transport.

The disturbances of the last few days in A Coruña, Barcelona, and Bilbao have made security the main focus of the PP's discourse this week. Alberto Núñez Feijóo's strategy is to link the incidents directly to Pedro Sánchez and to position himself, in contrast to the socialist leader, as a guarantor of "order". He will do so, for example, by visiting businesses affected by the looting in Barcelona this Wednesday, just as his number 2, Miguel Tellado, visited Bilbao this Tuesday. "From the 30th onwards, there will be order. We will be implacable with the violent ones and the law will always be upheld," Feijóo stated at an event presenting the electoral list for Madrid for the November 29 elections.

The strategy of the PP and Vox to go hand in hand to defeat Pedro Sánchez in the general elections of November 29 is already translating into concrete agreements. Those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo and those of Santiago Abascal have agreed on a collaboration in 23 provinces to curb the left. The Spanish right announced this "understanding" this Monday with the aim of trying to neutralize the alliance that the PSOE and the Broad Front had already closed ten days ago to run in coalition in the upper house. Thus, the Senate elections will show, much more clearly than in the Congress, where these formulas have not been reproduced, the clash between two opposing blocs united to maximize the chances of obtaining representation. In this sense, the Popular Party members have claimed that it is an "intelligent collaboration", while the president of the Spanish government has said that this proves that the PP has become the same as Vox.

The same faces, but a different interaction. Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal are repeating as candidates for the right-wing bloc in the November 29 elections, but, unlike the previous elections three and a half years ago, the strategy of the PP and Vox on how to relate to each other has transformed. They have gone from the mistrust and crossed attacks of 2023 to a kind of non-aggression pact between the two parties, which have assumed that, for now, they are doomed to understand each other if they do not want to find themselves relegated to the opposition again. It is an assumption they no longer hide and which the right-wing media celebrates, urging Feijóo and Abascal not to repeat the mistakes—they are reproached for having been overconfident and harming themselves by fighting each other—that allowed Pedro Sánchez to continue governing to this day.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo is doubling down on his commitment to project an image of a forceful PP against Pedro Sánchez – also in response to the rise of Vox – and has chosen to place one of the party's harshest and most incendiary voices in the number two spot on the list for Madrid. Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo (Madrid, 1974) ascends to this position ahead of November 29th, in an election that she herself defines as "existential, historic, and decisive" for the future of Spain. The PP leader confirmed his choice this Thursday after days of hints that already suggested he would bet on a profile that has been characterized as an internal loose cannon. Álvarez de Toledo deploys her own sharp, ideological discourse which, in previous stages, she has not hesitated to direct even against her own party's leadership, as happened with Pablo Casado, with whom she ended up in conflict.

In the midst of the pre-campaign, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has personally committed to "guaranteeing Spanish" in classrooms. In practice, this means following the model that the PP leader applied in Galicia when he governed there and which, in Catalonia, would entail reducing teaching hours in Catalan. Let's review how the linguistic model of the schools in the autonomous region currently presided over by the Popular Party's Alfonso Rueda, successor to the now candidate for the Moncloa on November 29th, works, and which entities in defense of Galician and experts in sociolinguistics label as "disastrous" and "catastrophic".

Alberto Núñez Feijóo wants to show that he has nothing to do with Pedro Sánchez. The PP leader describes the Spanish Prime Minister as someone without any moral values, who uses institutions for personal interest and who systematically lies to the citizenry. Faced with this, Feijóo staged an event this Monday in Madrid, surrounded by much of the party's top brass, where he pledged to be the complete opposite. "Spaniards deserve a president who always tells them the truth," he stressed, also committing to "the law," "effort," and "unity." The Popular Party president has signed a document, titled "my contract with Spain," which gathers this philosophy and twelve other points, including the promise to reinforce Spanish in Catalan classrooms.

From being disparagingly called the Monguer by some of her party colleagues to receiving the nickname of the Empress. The rise of Isabel Díaz Ayuso within the Madrid PP has been as surprising as it has been meteoric. How has she managed to go from contempt to hegemony? The journalist David Fernández (Madrid, 1975) analyzes this trajectory in the book Ayuso. Zancadillas, intrigas y venganzas en la Corte de Madrid (Libros del K.O., 2026), an unauthorized biography for which he has spoken with 180 people who have known the current president of the Community of Madrid in different stages of her political career.

"It's been many years and many hatreds." That is how Gabriel Rufián spoke, in an interview this Friday on RAC1, about the obstacles to achieving a unitary list of the left in the State. Personal enmities also influence the dispute between parties, and the baggage of the divorce between Podemos and Sumar still weighs heavily; this was definitively consummated three years ago in Congress and may condemn the electoral prospects of the left. In the negotiations of the last few days, wounds that are still open and distrust that has been dragging on since the process of drafting the lists for the 2023 elections have been perceptible.

While the space to the left of the PSOE is still debating leaderships and negotiating in extremis a formula to achieve unity, the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) has predicted an improvement in the result of the progressive bloc as a whole. According to the public body to which demoscopy experts have long attributed a bias towards the left, the PSOE and the Broad Front –without counting the rest of the plurinational majority– could add up to a higher percentage of the vote than that of the PP and Vox. However, beyond this preference for a progressive government pointed to by the CIS –unlike what other private polls indicate–, the October barometer published this Wednesday also places some proper names as the favorites to reach the Moncloa.

Gabriel Rufián, number 1; Mireia Ingla, number 2; Jordi Albert, number 3, and Laura Pelay, number 4. These are, for the moment, the candidates that ERC has announced for the Barcelona constituency. To complete the list for the demarcation, the numbers will reach up to 32 (plus the substitutes), and it has not yet been made public what position the person designated by Podem will occupy. But who will it be? According to sources consulted by ARA, one of the names that the purple party had put on the table was that of the journalist Cristina Fallarás, a Catalan born in Zaragoza and a resident of Madrid. But it will not be her who finally becomes part of the republican candidacy. Podem, in fact, avoids publicly advancing any name, but assures that it will come from the open primary process that it started this Wednesday and that will close this Thursday. The name will specifically come from the people who have presented themselves in the Barcelona demarcation.

The first barometer from the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) following the housing protests has catapulted the PSOE, which would position itself as the leading force nearly twelve points ahead of the PP. According to the survey conducted between October 1st and 6th, coinciding with the vote in Congress on the Maricarmen decree and the announcement of a snap election, the socialists would obtain 34% of the votes, while the popular party would fall to 22.2%. Regarding the barometer from a month ago, Pedro Sánchez's party would grow by three points (in September the CIS gave them a voting estimate of 31%), while Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party would retreat by 3.3 points (compared to the 25.5% in the previous survey). Unlike the PP's decline, the CIS forecasts growth for Vox, which goes from 16.6% to 17.1% (half a point more) and reduces the distance with the popular party to just 5.1 points, when in September it was 8.9 points.

There were a few weeks, during the height of the Ceuta crisis, when the main question was: why aren't the monarchs visiting the autonomous city after the massive influx of immigrants on July 30th? The day finally arrived this Tuesday, just the day after Hispanic Day, when Felipe VI and Letizia stepped into the autonomous city for the first time and claimed its Spanish identity. "Ceuta is Spain and Europe," the monarch defended in a speech delivered at the end of a day in which he had a crowd bath. It is a delicate trip regarding the diplomatic balances of the Spanish state with Morocco, but the king was clear in his rejection of this summer's "violation of the border." "The sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country are not negotiable: they are indisputable," he remarked.

The name of Iván Redondo (San Sebastián, 1981), chief of staff to Pedro Sánchez between 2018 and 2021, is associated, just like the socialist leader's, with great publicity stunts. The political consultant was one of the architects of the motion of no confidence with which the Spanish prime minister first came to power. Later, from the pinnacle of Moncloa, he was also decisive in the formation of the first coalition executive between the PSOE and Podemos. After a few years away from the political front line, Redondo has been regaining media presence following the publication at the beginning of May of his book The Manual (Contraluz, 2026) and has not closed the door on a possible return to politics.