This morning, one of the most politically charged events of the Pope's trip to Spain took place. For the first time in history, a Pope has addressed the Spanish Congress and Senate in a joint session. in the Pope's trip to Spain. For the first time in history, a Pope has addressed the Spanish Congress and Senate in a joint session.If I start from the end, I will tell you that his speech was met with nearly seven minutes of applause. And this, considering that Leo XIV today delivered the most doctrinal speech of those pronounced so far. For example, when he lamented to the legislators about the abortion and euthanasia laws:

These days when the Mossos are watching the sewers, they will find them very full. Of recordings, for example, like that of a former Secretary of State for Security, Francisco Martínez, who admits to the former PSOE fixer, Leire Díez, that the story of Xavier Trias's account in Andorra was false, invented by a policeman and leaked by the “number 1 leaker, you can imagine who it is. Jorge [Fernández Díaz], he was crazy about leaking [...] she did it talking to the pedrojotas”. They, who wanted to be like Bernstein and Woodward bringing down a president, were not, in reality, more than obedient printers of a minister's toxic merchandise. All for the homeland and for the publishing business, of course; nothing for the truth or for the rule of law. What must the very devout former minister have thought when he heard the Pope saying that “no one can kneel before God and despise his brother”?While Leo XIV was preparing these words, Pedro Sánchez (probably “PS” in the plumber's papers) escaped to Primavera Sound. When they can no longer bear the Madrid that wants to kill them, they take refuge in Catalonia and fill us with clichés: “A way to show the world a Barcelona and a Spain that are open, diverse, and full of energy. [...] Its international success speaks of a plural society that understands culture as a space for meeting, coexistence, and freedom”. It’s been years since we’ve been like this. And we would be even more so if we hadn't had to carry the dirty war and the premeditated disinterest of a useless state that can’t even run its trains on time, a drain of energies and resources, which from time to time uses the brush that Tarradellas spoke of.

Iván Redondo (Sant Sebastià, 1981) has already become a legend of political communication in Spain. He was the power behind the scenes at Moncloa from 2018 to 2021 as chief of staff for Pedro Sánchez, and previously began in Badalona with Xavier García Albiol and in Extremadura with the government of José Antonio Monago. Five years after leaving the Spanish government, he explains why he left and the keys to winning elections in El manual (2026, Contraluz).

The growth of the Catalan and Spanish economy is undeniable. And future estimates, despite a slowdown, confirm that we will continue to be the champions of GDP growth. The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, did not fail to mention this during his speech at the annual meeting of the Cercle d'Economia in Barcelona, where he surprised the audience by announcing the steps to present the State budgets for 2027, which sound more like an electoral program than a real possibility.

After two weeks of upheaval, the Pope's visit offers the possibility of a parenthesis of peace and a certain truce. Leo XIV arrives with a very full agenda with which the Spanish government hopes to have the opportunity to temporarily change the scenario. It is a historic visit and attention must be focused on the pontiff's words, especially regarding his intervention in Congress, this coming Monday.

When the impact of the indictment of former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has not yet faded, the Leire case, which investigates an alleged plot to torpedo judicial cases affecting government members or those close to Pedro Sánchez, threatens to become a ticking time bomb against the PSOE. In the last few hours, we have seen how the summary has forced the socialists to qualify or directly rectify previous statements. Now, for example, it can no longer be claimed that Leire Díez was nobody in the PSOE, when we know that she met with Santos Cerdán 22 times; that she entered Ferraz normally; that she spoke with the party president, Cristina Narbona, and that she met up to three times with the director of the Civil Guard, Mercedes González.

Today I was talking to an important businessman, very well politically connected, who these days has attended the Cercle d’Economia conference and who the day before yesterday heard Feijóo and yesterday heard Sánchez and he told me that both interventions had seemed to him like something to cry about.Feijóo's by weak, by mediated by Aznar and Ayuso, without his own thought, without knowing how to oppose Sánchez nor, much less, generate enthusiasm.And regarding Sánchez, it was said that, although he knows how to navigate better and speaks to a Catalan audience in terms that are understood here and are even accepted much better than Feijóo's, he is a politician who now only lives for his political survival. Is it because he is hooked on power? Not only that: because he knows that the day he ceases to be president, he has a high chance of ending up prosecuted and in prison. And so, as an exercise in survival, we must understand the incredible announcement that he will present budgets for 2027. Has he not been able to approve this year's budget, and before the elections, will he have the votes to push through the accounts? Sánchez is the first to know that it doesn't sound credible at all. Now, he has a great ability to turn things around. You already know that he, who before an election promised that he would bring Puigdemont arrested, approved pardons after the elections. And yesterday he said that amnesty was good... for the PP!Pedro Sánchez: “Although it may seem unbelievable, there is explicit recognition from the head of the opposition and the People's Party to a political actor, in this case Junts per Catalunya, whom they did not recognize until very recently. I think this is good news. Truly, I don't say this as a provocation. Because, effectively, the pardons, the measures of grace, and also this amnesty law, aim to recover something that one of the main analysts of La Vanguardia said at the time, after the amnesty: “We are all here now”. Well, I think this is a very important point to make our democracy a much stronger system and, why not?, in a future where the Spanish right can once again find common ground, in terms of political understanding, with the Catalan right and also with the Basque right”.As a theory it has its logic. In the real world, it doesn't work. The PP knows that an understanding with Junts would boost Vox's vote. Apart from the fact that the PP lives and has lived by going against the amnesty.But the most amazing thing, this businessman told me, is that all this, Sánchez was saying it just when it became known that the Civil Guard had concluded that Santos Cerdán and Leire Díez wanted to protect Sánchez's interests and they set up a plot to influence legal cases that had been opened against the PSOE. In other words, Cerdán would be the leader of a plot to save Sánchez, which has led Feijóo to say that the PSOE will end up convicted of criminal organization.This is all a disaster. It has splashed the PSC, and that is why yesterday President Illa said in the control session of the Parliament that his party is the PSC (not the PSOE).Look, all this mess holds up because Spain's big economic figures hold up, the level of tax collection is historic (that's why we can afford to have the price of gasoline subsidized) but never let the economy falter, this will be a social disaster (there is already a lot of poverty). And so here we are, hoping the Pope comes, for the World Cup and holidays to start. Speaking of the Pope, I am aware that from the conversations among those who can do something about it, it is understood that the blessing of the Jesus Christ tower will be in Catalan and Spanish. And that tomorrow a welcome text to Leo XIV will be published in two Italian newspapers and two Spanish newspapers, signed by five presidents of the Generalitat and five presidents of the Parliament. And by Barça, among other personalities and institutions. A text without controversy, positive, which will explain to the Pope that he will come to a country called Catalonia.

The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has surprised both allies and adversaries at the Cercle d'Economia by announcing that this very week the order for the elaboration of the 2027 budgets will be published in the BOE. Needless to say, in the midst of a judicial storm against the PSOE and with the legislature about to enter its final year, the possibility of these accounts moving forward is almost non-existent. If it wasn't possible in 2024 and 2025, when there was still half a term left, it's even less so now. What, then, is behind this plot twist from the Spanish President?

The case against Pedro Sánchez's brother is one of those issues that has quickly led to a clash of parallel narratives in which, depending on who you read, David Sánchez seems to be a firm candidate for beatification or deserving of a spell in the cauldrons of Pere Botero. Let's look, for example, at this headline from El Mundo: “Key witness cornered the competition that the brother won”. Ah, the old superlative of suggested guilt! But, in this auction of evidence, La Razón raises the stakes and doubles the number of people condemning (the other) Sánchez: “Two witnesses support the evidence against David Sánchez about his workplace in Badajoz”. Who offers more? Did I hear three witnesses in the back row? No, but El Periódico proposes someone else to nail the brother to the cross: “The aspirant to David Sánchez's position says that ‘it was known who it was for’”. No one would bet much on the innocence of the accused, reading all these people who are tearing his story to shreds. But here comes El País who sees it very differently and, on its front page, tries to counter the adverse narratives with: “Civil servants defend that Sánchez obtained the position in a clean process”. 

There was great interest in seeing the surprise that Pedro Sánchez was preparing in his speech at the closing of the annual meeting of the Cercle d'Economia, that is, the rabbit he would pull out of the hat. At last year's edition, for example, he announced an unprecedented consultation on BBVA's takeover bid for Banco Sabadell, a merger that failed last October.

If any impartial observer were to land in Madrid and review what has happened in the last six months, they would ask themselves a question: considering the regional election results, the polls, and the proliferation of alleged corruption cases, why doesn't Pedro Sánchez face an internal revolt within the PSOE? Is there currently too much criticism within the socialist ranks to launch an internal challenge and force, for example, an election? The answer is that the probability is almost zero. Although there are some voices raising a finger, the opposition, infinitesimal, is not articulated, has no visible face, nor support within the party's organic structures, which are dominated by Sánchez's allies. For what reason?

Without any reference to the judicial cases surrounding his environment, but with an announcement that is the message itself, Pedro Sánchez is pushing the legislature forward and this week will begin the process of presenting the 2027 budgets. The announcement was made before Catalan business leaders and also the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, at this year's conference of the Cercle d'Economia in Barcelona. Sánchez has claimed the need for state accounts, which would be the first of the legislature and would arrive at the most delicate moment of the term, when cases of alleged corruption are increasingly besieging the environment of the Spanish president.

The PP has found itself trapped in its own logic: if the situation in Spain is so dire, what was the point of patiently waiting for the miracle that Sánchez would call early elections, a miracle they knew wouldn't happen? And they have decided to go on the offensive: Feijóo, who is in Barcelona today at an event organized by the Cercle d'Economia, has offered Junts and PNB a government without Vox to go to the polls. In other words, he is asking the PNB and Junts to vote for him to be president, and immediately, Feijóo calls elections as president of a government in which there would be no Vox minister. The PNB is not interested in the operation. Basque nationalist left-wing parties hinder him, and he cannot openly align with the PP, at least not so explicitly.

The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is trying again. He will not stop taking advantage of the judicial siege of Pedro Sánchez. He will not stop. His objective is to put maximum pressure on those who hold the key to breaking the socialist president's investiture majority, Junts and the PNB. He needs them to tip the scales or, at least, to unbalance them. He is, of course, fully aware that the presence of the far-right Vox is the factor that most prevents the Catalan and Basque nationalist right-wingers from embracing the end of sanchismo. That is why this time he winks at them with a motion of no confidence that would imply, as he has explained, an ephemeral government without Abascal's party with the sole objective of calling elections immediately. What he is telling them, therefore, is this: give me circumstantial support (without Vox) and let the ballot boxes decide what the next stage will be.

Today, June 1, marks eight years since Sánchez has been president of the Spanish government thanks to the motion of no confidence he won against Rajoy. It was the first time a candidate reached the presidency through such a vote.Eight years later we have had the pardons, the amnesty still not completed because the Supreme Court is granting extensions, the demobilized independence movement, Commuter Rail by bus, Illa as President of the Generalitat, an unevenly distributed economic growth, the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of finding a flat, and very strained public services.Without going any further, Catalan doctors are called upon not to do any more overtime, under the eloquent slogan Not one more minute, because they don't finish the work they have and the on-call shifts have already turned days into three eight-hour shifts. Doctors want a response from the administration, like the one teachers have already received, who reached an agreement with the Department of Education this past weekend. This agreement will be submitted for a vote by teachers until Thursday. At the risk of being wrong, I believe that teachers have achieved a good part of what they were asking for, the strike has pushed teachers' pockets to the limit and families' patience, and therefore, the most logical thing would be for teachers to vote yes to an agreement reached by unions that did not settle for the first agreement signed by UGT and CCOO. The minister Niubó said this morning that a "no" would lead to the chaos of the education system. With this reality in the streets, political power continues in its own world.Sánchez, who will still take three weeks to explain himself in Congress, is betting everything on the Pope's visit, which will arrive this Saturday in Madrid, the "unity" effect of the Football World Cup, the August holidays and reaching autumn and having 2027 within reach. He himself says it: “The tricksters with their maneuvers, and we to govern until 2027 and beyond, whatever the Spanish want” “Until 2027 and beyond” sounds like it’s from the astronaut of lawfare, will not be new to them. In this analysis, we already told them weeks ago that the Spanish government not only wants to hold on until 2027, but they are also considering re-investing Sánchez.And the one who has already tied his destiny to that of Sánchez is Illa. At an event yesterday in Tarragona, he said, in Spanish so that the Spanish TV channels could broadcast it without subtitles and Sánchez would not be alone, that Sánchez was a “moral benchmark”.

Upon entering the UGT headquarters in Madrid, it was difficult to tell if it was the closing of the Congress of the Spanish Socialist Youth or a nightclub. The machine version of Pedro by Raffaella Carrà was playing at full blast while the leaders waited for the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, to enter the hall. A militant stood with a raised rose and two books by the PSOE leader in his hand –Manual de resistencia and Tierra firme–, which Sánchez dutifully signed as he passed by amidst shouts and applause. It is the staging of what the PSOE wants to do after fifteen days of judicial earthquake: counterattack.

If the previous Spanish legislature (2019-2023) was marked by judicial cases against the independence movement, the current one has become a real judicial minefield for the PSOE. The common thread between the two was, moreover, the amnesty, which Pedro Sánchez pledged to approve to secure the votes of ERC and Junts for his investiture. Although its implementation, two years after it was approved, has not yet been completed – with more than a hundred politicians, activists, and public officials with pending proceedings – one of the tangible effects of the measure has been the anger of the political and judicial right over the socialists' concession. In fact, the legislature began with constant protests in front of the PSOE headquarters encouraged by the far-right and also by PP officials.

Has the legislature reached its end in Spain? In Junts, they are convinced that the PSOE government has no more room to maneuver and that elections should be called, but Pedro Sánchez seems willing to hold on, and the opposition only has one way to force him to leave Moncloa: a motion of no confidence with the help of PP and Vox, which Junts is not willing to explore. This is the dilemma being experienced today within Junts, clearly expressed under the leadership of the leader in Congress, Miriam Nogueras.

Government changes in Spain go through processes of demolition. They seem like regime changes, and sometimes they even are. I'm not talking about the virulence of political confrontation. Internal struggles within and outside parties do not make Spain unique. No, what makes Spain unique is an unfinished territorial architecture that always threatens to be demolished or reconfigured. It is this unresolved issue and the bloody expression of ideological difference that turns politics into a battlefield.

At the moment, Spanish political life greatly resembles the frozen images that sometimes get stuck, fixed, on the screen of a television or some other device. We are waiting for the next step, something has to happen, but no one is taking the initiative. The indictment of former government president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has sparked all sorts of hypotheses and worried comments, but it has not led to substantial changes in the relations between political forces.