"We trust in the comeback." In this way, the PSOE spokesperson, Montse Mínguez, responded this Monday to all the published polls that point to a historic defeat for the socialists in the Andalusian elections on May 17. "Let's not get demoralized, quite the opposite," she added, and assured that there are "many people worried about public services" who will trust María Jesús Montero to change the model that the PP has established in the last two legislatures. "We will fight until the end, the vote is on May 17 and that is the poll that counts," she stated.

For a few weeks now, the Government and Esquerra have been negotiating the budgets that derailed in March with discretion. The two parties decided to give themselves a second chance to try to reach an agreement before the summer holidays and, after multiple meetings and working groups, as the ARA has learned, socialists and republicans in Barcelona and Madridhave unblocked two issues that pave the way for the accounts. If part of the Quart Cinturó (by road) was what unblocked the 2022 budgets of Pere Aragonès' Government, the orbital railway axis, a kind of railway Quart Cinturó, is what seems to be getting Salvador Illa's first accounts on track. It is about the railway network to connect the second metropolitan ring without passing through Barcelona.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has infiltrated almost every corner of our daily lives, often without us being fully aware of it. A few days ago, the news of a €1,000 fine for a judge for using AI to issue a sentence highlighted the risks of delegating human decisions to algorithms. In this context, the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) has presented a revealing study on AI's vote recommendation. The results are curious: the PSOE systematically leads recommendations in all languages and platforms, followed at a distance by Sumar and Podemos. In contrast, the PP suffers the consequences: it has 96.3% visibility, but only a moderate recommendation of 28.2%, far from the PSOE. Vox, despite appearing often, receives marginal recommendations, below 6%.The study, jointly led by professors Ferran Lalueza and Víctor Gil, has analyzed 1,220 queries on five major platforms (ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity) and in four languages (Catalan, Galician, Basque, and Spanish). "Previous studies have shown that these tools have a great capacity to influence people's voting decisions," says Cristina Aced, a UOC professor and member of the research team, in conversation with ARA. "They are very persuasive when building the foundation of their discourse," she explains.The methodology consisted of formulating 61 questions based on the real concerns of citizens according to the CIS, including housing, unemployment, immigration, and healthcare. To avoid personal biases, the research was not conducted as conventional users, but through an application connector. Aced details that this is done to carry out the study "more objectively", as the system "does not take into account the user's memory or their geographical location". The study also reveals that not all AIs are equally opinionated: ChatGPT and Grok tend to position themselves openly, while Gemini or Copilot are more neutral. According to Aced, this is due to "how they are programmed", although they recall that "in the end it depends a lot on the tool you use and the sources they draw from".

The conservative tsunami that seemed to point to the result of the 28-M elections in Spain –with the vast majority of autonomous communities and large cities dyed the blue of the PP and the green of Vox– could end up becoming a wave that dies on the coast this July 23rd. The push of the populars, who dream of surpassing 160 deputies, seems to have been diluted in recent weeks, and, according to the survey that the Opinòmetre Institute has done for ARA, despite winning the elections with between 125 and 140 deputies, Alberto Núñez Feijóo would have it very difficult to access Moncloa. Not even the sum with Vox (between 22 and 30 deputies) would be enough to surpass the 176 seats that mark the absolute majority in Congress. Even at the high end of the range, the two parties only add up to 170 parliamentarians.

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.

This time we have had a more representative May Day compared to some of the preceding years. In the events called for by the unions, the emotional chord was struck deeply, in mobilizations that respond to a specific political and social situation and that carry a clear message. The main celebration was held in Malaga for various reasons, starting with the fact that Andalusia votes on May 17. The call has allowed for an image of a certain unity of the left, which we already know does not exist in political terms. However, it has become clear that there are indeed essential points of coincidence, susceptible of becoming driving ideas for future initiatives, especially as the general elections approach. The fact that María Jesús Montero and Yolanda Díaz coincided at the Malaga demonstration does not reduce their differences, but it does reflect a common denominator on key issues.

Political parties have been able to hold the first day of the electoral campaign in Andalusia this May 1st, after the starting gun was fired last dawn. And, despite the president of the Regional Government, the Popular Party's Juanma Moreno Bonilla, not wanting to admit it, the party setting the pace of the campaign is Vox. The Andalusian president knows he could lose the majority by just a handful of votes. And that's why his party is concentrating on trying to strengthen the centrist electoral base, to avoid defections, despite the headaches caused by "the 'national priority' that the PP itself has agreed with Vox" in Extremadura and Aragon. The political victory that Alberto Núñez Feijóo has handed to the far-right has completely disrupted an election that is the Galician leader's first acid test after his umpteenth strategic turn with concessions to Le Penism, which popularized the slogan 'Our people first'.

Two housing measures hang by a thread: the extraordinary extension of rental contracts ending between March 22, 2026, and December 31, 2027, and the limitation of the annual update of contracts to 2% to avoid inflation hikes due to the war in the Middle East. Both proposals are included in the Spanish government's decree to address, precisely, the economic shock of the war on housing, particularly on rents, and which the Congress votes on this Tuesday. Nothing suggests, however, that it will prosper.

More than forty years have passed since the referendum on Spain's membership in NATO. The vote took place on March 12, 1986, when the former mayor of Barcelona, Narcís Serra (PSC), was Minister of Defense. In these last four decades, Spanish society has changed a lot regarding its knowledge of foreign policy and defense matters, and the majority perceptions about the commitments that membership in the Western world implies. It would now make no sense to reconsider the country's role in its contribution in this area.

Pedro Sánchez admits privately what everyone else knows: that no matter how often he lands on his feet, next year it will be difficult for him to repeat the feat of 2023, that is, to lose the elections but end up governing thanks to the votes of a parliamentary majority Frankenstein. (Especially if the left-wing majority continues to make friends as Rufián usually does or as Vice President Yolanda Díaz did yesterday, when she called Junts a “classist and racist” party, despite being the first to rush to Brussels to ask for Puigdemont's party's votes for the investiture.)

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.

Uproar on the right and desolation on the left of the socialists, where the noisy leaderships of four days ago are getting lost in a general blurring. With canonical cases in both Catalan and Spanish politics, albeit with different forms and styles. Two examples of how stars that seemed to break barriers are fading: Pablo Iglesias, convinced that his presence was enough, did not want to understand that politics has a part of heavy and unsightly work behind the scenes, he was lazy about organic entanglements and got stuck when it came to moving from rhetoric to action. Result: he is a little more out of play every day. In the Catalan case, Ada Colau, who entered the mayorship with momentum, gradually blurred as if she couldn't find her place in the world of institutional politics and got lost in the transition from verbal illusions to practical concreteness. The drift of Podem and Comuns and the consequent fragmentation of their space, on a direct path to insolvency, force us to question the so-called far-left. And it's not just a problem for Catalonia or Spain.

Spanish politics is the scene of a total confrontation between the government and its detractors, but history shows that promises of total rupture by the opposition often end up diluted when entering the Moncloa Palace. Alberto Núñez Feijóo's People's Party has a whole series of laws that it has promised to repeal when it governs, as Mariano Rajoy had previously done, for example. What was the result after becoming president?

Carlos Cuerpo and Arcadi España have moved up a rung in the Spanish government after the departure of María Jesús Montero. The hitherto number two in the Spanish executive, however, not only hands over the first vice-presidency and the Ministry of Finance, but also the negotiating power with the so-called Catalan file. Specifically, Arcadi España will be the one to tackle the hot potato of materializing the new financing and reopening talks with Esquerra after the transfer of the IRPF derailed. España was one of the strong men of Ximo Puig's Valencian government and those who know him define him as a convinced federalist and Valencianist, as well as being a firm defender of new regional financing. In fact, he endorses the reform that Montero agreed with ERC. And what do PSC and ERC think of the new minister? The Republicans view him favorably for giving a new "opportunity" to negotiations.In Palau they also look hopefully at the new minister, whom a voice from the Catalan socialists describes as "receptive" to the demands of Catalonia, many of them coinciding with those of the Valencian Country."Arcadi is social democracy made politician, dialogue made ruler, common sense made person," wrote former Valencian president Ximo Puig in a message on X after his appointment was made public. In statements to el ARA, he reaffirms: "He is a person with an open disposition, without closed dogmatisms, with the capacity to listen and empathy." España was Puig's chief of staff during his time in Madrid, also when he was general secretary of the PSPV and when he presided over the Generalitat Valenciana, and subsequently served as minister of Territorial Policy and also of Finance. "Federalism is part of his political culture," defends Puig, who recalls that he is one of the people who has most defended new regional financing within the PSOE. In fact, this is one of the issues that Esquerra values.

This morning something very interesting happened, a new strategic move by Pedro Sánchez in his long and well-known struggle to resist, to resist everything: his collaborators in prison, the indictment of his wife and brother, his party defeated in every election in Extremadura, Aragon, and Castile and León. This morning Sánchez went to Congress to explain the social measures to alleviate the cost of the war in Iran. And he went on the attack. Seeing that Europe is no longer leaving him alone with the "No to war" movement, he said that the 2026 war in Iran is like the 2003 Iraq War, which had disastrous consequences in Iraq, in the world, and on our streets with Islamist terrorism. That if that war was illegal, this one is too. And that the People's Party (PP) was complicit. But to say that Iran is like Iraq, to ​​once again use the trump card of the "No to war" movement of 2003, is déjà vu. And then, Sánchez personalized it with a tremendous attack against José María Aznar. He said that Aznar, in 2003, wanted to feel important, that he supported a war in exchange for ego, for the power to influence George Bush. He recalled that the Madrid bombings were the fault of that war. And he recalled that Aznar shows no remorse. He even went so far as to question his morality.

The week begins in a very dangerous way. As you know, Trump has announced attacks on Iranian power plants if Iran does not unblock the Strait of Hormuz Iran has warned that its response will be to attack the desalination plants of the Persian Gulf countries. You attack my electricity, and I'll attack your water.

At the beginning of the year, the PSOE and Podemos parties agreed on a mass regularization of migrants to grant legal status to half a million people already living in Spain. They did so by drafting immigration regulations to avoid having to go through Congress, where they would have struggled to secure a majority to pass them. However, the PP has found a loophole to try to influence the Senate through the law on repeat offenses, promoted by Junts and approved last week in the upper house. The PP pushed for an amendment to toughen the conditions for the regularization of migrants, and, as ARA has learned, Junts will vote in favor this Thursday in the final vote in Congress. The regularization will still go ahead, but controls for obtaining a residence permit will be increased.

The abilities that Pedro Sánchez's government has to take economic and political measures without the Parliament's consent in emergency cases have now been added, out of necessity, the ability to save in extremis, with similar agility, episodes of internal dissent. The last Council of Ministers has been one of the most memorable of this legislature, due to the curious situation caused by the prior negotiation between the socialist majority of the executive and the minority of Sumar. The formation of Vice-President Yolanda Díaz needed to include its own proposals in the package of aid measures for the sectors most affected by the consequences of the war in Iran. From an ideological perspective, it is logical that Sumar insisted on leaving its mark on the drafting of decisions of this type. But it makes little sense to turn the prologue of a Council of Ministers into an episode that the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, described as "salseig" (gossip), whether as a dance or as a spicy substance in certain dishes. The Solomon-like solution found —approving two decrees instead of one— served to unblock a situation that was more showy than serious.

The ministers from the Sumar coalition refused to begin the meeting until their demands were met: essentially, the inclusion of rental contract extensions in the measures to address the war in Iran. Their two-hour walkout before Friday's cabinet meeting was resolved with the enactment of two decrees, not just one as the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) had intended, to include tax cuts for the most affected sectors. Sumar touted this resolution on Saturday, taking a swipe at their socialist partners. "Without Sumar, there is no government," the movement's coordinator, Lara Hernández, reiterated in a statement without taking questions. A threat to the socialists? The party, still led by Yolanda Díaz, has no intention of leaving the government or jeopardizing the coalition in the face of a potential PP (People's Party)-Vox majority. In fact, Hernández herself emphasized that it is precisely the influence Sumar can wield that makes "being in government worthwhile."

Politics shouldn't be all about pronouncements and grand gestures. Pragmatism is also essential. In short, it's about being practical so that citizens, those governed, feel they aren't being abandoned when times get tough. And this seems to be the path the Spanish government has taken with the package of measures designed to mitigate the effects of the war in the Middle East. The conflict, whose end appears far off, has driven up gas and oil prices and, consequently, the prices of everything related to them, such as fuel and electricity. That's why the measures announced by Pedro Sánchez will amount to around 5 billion euros, far less than the more than 20 billion mobilized in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine—but we are still in the early stages and don't know how long the war might last. The first decree focuses on reducing energy taxes, one of the services most affected by the impact of the Middle East crisis, and one that could have ripple effects throughout the economy. In addition to lowering the VAT on electricity and gas from the current 21% to 10%, as well as on biomass raw materials such as pellets and firewood, the energy production tax, currently at 7%, is temporarily eliminated and reduced from 5.5% to a special rate of 0.5%. Maximum retail prices for butane and propane are also frozen. The VAT on gasoline and diesel is also reduced, which, according to the Prime Minister's office, will result in a savings of approximately 30 cents per liter when filling up. Consumer organizations estimate that the reduction will be around 17 cents for diesel, which has seen the largest price increase. A key point, also included in the decree, is granting the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) new supervisory and sanctioning powers to prevent operators from exploiting the tax cut to increase their profit margins and enrich themselves. This is essential to prevent the tax reduction from benefiting certain companies more than citizens and, therefore, taxpayers.