Pedro Sánchez cannot find support to move forward with the housing measures he announced almost a month ago. After weeks of tug-of-war with the investiture bloc partners, particularly with Junts, the Spanish government has decided to postpone the approval of the new housing decree until after the summer, which, among other things, was to include an extraordinary extension of rents until 2028, as reported by El País and confirmed by the Ministry of Housing.

Describing the PSOE's life these days is equivalent to writing the chronicle of a desolation. If it was already difficult to give full credit to the merely exculpatory initial statements of former government president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, followed by more than two months of silence, his television appearance to give explanations has only worsened the situation, especially in the political arena. In the judicial sphere, it may be different, because there are other rules of the game. The defense will play the card of requesting the nullity of the proceedings strongly, based on procedural problems and guarantees of fundamental rights. Nor is it an easy battle, but Zapatero has an experienced lawyer in this regard, Víctor Moreno Catena. He is a professor of procedural law who, for six years (1988-1994), held high positions in the Ministry of the Interior, first as technical secretary general and later as undersecretary.

The Ministry of Housing announced this Monday that David Lucas, Secretary of State for Housing, has died at the age of 58. Lucas, who had also been the mayor of Móstoles, had put his public life on hold at the end of June to be treated for cancer, which he could not overcome. "The ministry deeply regrets the loss of an excellent colleague who dedicated his life to public service and the common good".

Catalonia once again finds itself among the communities to which the State allocates the fewest resources. According to reports that the Ministry of Finance sent this Friday to political parties and Congress, and to which ARA has had access, the Spanish government spent 8.6% of the total investment it executed in 2025 in autonomous communities in Catalonia. It is the year in which it receives the smallest slice of the pie in the last ten years, a period during which Catalonia has received between 9% and 13% of the investments carried out by the central executive.

The day after the European justice's endorsement of the amnesty everyone builds their own narrative. While the independence movement celebrates the ECJ's decision, but warns that this does not end the repression, both the Catalan and Spanish governments see their "reconciliation" agenda validated and claim the end of the "political crisis" between Catalonia and the State. Moreover, the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, has assured that if he "were Carles Puigdemont" he would return to Spain, "without a doubt". "We must face up to it once and for all," he said in an interview with RNE, as reported by Efe. This attitude has not pleased Junts at all, as the arrest warrant remains in effect and the former president would be arrested. "What misery and frivolity," replied the party's general secretary, Jordi Turull. After this, party sources consulted by ARA reaffirm their break with the Spanish government, also after the ECJ's ruling in favor of amnesty.

Mariano Rajoy not only downplayed his racist comment about the French team, backed by the PP, but now he is resisting apologizing. Amid the euphoria over Spain's progress to the World Cup final, the former Spanish president has published a new article in El Debate in which he discusses the controversy surrounding him. A chronicle with little footballing content and a lot of politics, in which he directly attacks the Spanish government: "They don't apologize for anything," he even says.

The racist comment by Mariano Rajoy about the French team football is still ongoing, but the PP has opted to ignore the criticism and play it down. After France protested the words of the former Spanish president, who said the French team is a team with a lot of "level" but "without Frenchmen", Pedro Sánchez's government has come out in force this Monday to use the controversy against the Popular Party. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has directly demanded that Alberto Núñez Feijóo disavow Rajoy and has asked the media outlet that published his football chronicle, The Debate, who withdraws the article, the sixth by the popular in this World Cup.

The Spanish government has formalized the change in the leadership of the Tax Agency this Tuesday. Antonio Ansón Latorre (Zaragoza, 1962) will assume the general direction of the tax administration. For just over a year, he has been the director of the cabinet of the Secretary of State for Finance, the highest authority responsible for directing and coordinating fiscal policy, the management of the tax system, and regional financing.

While the Spanish legislature is alive, the Spanish government maintains steps to try to bring the new regional financing model to light. What timeline is it working with? Once the Andalusian elections are overcome – in which the former vice-president and former Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, ran as a candidate – the state executive has reactivated the machinery and has set a new meeting of the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy (CPFF) for Wednesday, July 29, which should serve to put on the table the new financing system that the socialists agreed with ERC (and presented in January). Previously, on July 14, the Spanish government will hold a preparatory technical meeting with all the autonomous communities and this week it will distribute the specific proposal to all communities. The next step will be for the Council of Ministers to approve the proposal and then send it to Congress, probably in September. And there, it still has to win the necessary support for this new model to see the light.

The Catalan company Openchip, specializing in the design and marketing of high-performance chips, receives a new injection of public funds to boost its project. This Monday, the Barcelona-based company has received 115 million euros from the Spanish government through the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), also known as the central executive's technological SEPI.

"Do you intend to answer any questions?". This is the question that the PP spokesperson, Ester Muñoz, registered this week in the control session of Congress to address the Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo. A question, without explicit content, which highlights the desperation in the popular ranks with the style of Pedro Sánchez's number two. Unlike the now former vice-president María Jesús Montero, now in Andalusia, who was much more visceral and confronted Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party face-to-face, the new Spanish vice-president employs a strategy of moderation and pause that disconcerts her counterpart in the PP. If Ester Muñoz talks to him about corruption cases, Carlos Cuerpo responds with positive macroeconomic data. If Muñoz reproaches him for PSOE leaders attributing corruption investigations to a political operation, Carlos Cuerpo simply says he respects justice.

The Spanish government boasts about the construction of protected housing (HPO). Spain has begun to build the highest number of HPO homes in a first quarter since 2012, in a context of prices at peak levels and access to housing among citizens' main concerns. In parallel, it has also reached the highest number of completed HPO since then.

The Spanish economy is holding its ground despite the impact of the war in the Middle East, but it is not without risks. This is one of the main conclusions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists in their annual report on the Spanish economy, the so-called Article IV, in which they launch a series of recommendations to the Spanish government, starting with the need to carry out fiscal consolidation to help strengthen public finances.

The State and the Generalitat have signed this Wednesday the agreements with ERC for the Catalan budgets at the Bilateral Commission they held in Madrid, which lasted less than an hour. The Republicans set this condition to have a guarantee of compliance with the pacts that depend on Pedro Sánchez's executive, among which is the creation of an investment company, that is, a company that will be approved by the Council of Ministers during this 2026 and will be participated by both administrations. This company will serve to "provide greater agility, flexibility and operational capacity" for the execution of studies, projects and works linked to infrastructures and other public investments, as the Government explained in a press release. In parallel, however, they are not giving up on the possibility of moving forward with a "State-Generalitat parity consortium for investments" which would depend on the Ministry of Transport. For this to prosper, however, it requires the approval of Congress, where the proposal derailed a few weeks ago due to the opposing vote of Junts.

The day has arrived. This Sunday Andalusia votes in elections that are regional and that many will perceive as a genuine primary. But in a certain sense, it is also a final, an event in which morale and the possibilities with which the PP will have to face the rest of the legislature for the whole of Spain are at stake. If the current Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, manages to regain his absolute majority, the bells will ring loud at Calle Génova in Madrid, where the popular party has its central headquarters. And if he does not obtain this result, they will also ring them, but they will emit a different, more subdued sound, because it will be necessary to go looking for Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, to try to guarantee a new parliamentary majority. And from previous experiences, it is already known that an operation of this kind is always a headache.

The controversy is associated with the name of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. In fact, for years she has made this her particular political strategy, but surely her latest trip to Mexico has exceeded all expectations. An official trip that, on the one hand, has called into question the reconciliation process between Spain and the country presided over by Claudia Sheinbaum after years of frozen relations; and on the other hand, has ignited Mexican politics and society to the point where Díaz Ayuso's team decided to leave the official trip ahead of time. This Monday, the president of the Community of Madrid has opted to blame the Spanish and Mexican governments: "We had to disappear. We were in danger".

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.

The election of magistrates to occupy relevant positions in the judiciary is always associated with political battles or, at least, with the tug-of-war between conservatives and progressives. The composition of the General Council of the Judiciary, the Constitutional Court, and the Supreme Court usually makes front-page news, while the election to international bodies often takes a back seat. This is not the case now: there is an open battle over the selection process for the Spanish judge at the European Court of Human Rights. The current judge, the conservative María Elósegui, sees her term end in March 2027, and the process initiated by the Spanish government has generated controversy among candidates: it has been challenged by a member of the CGPJ proposed by Sumar, Carlos Hugo Preciado, and, according to legal sources consulted by this newspaper, he has not been the only one, as other aspirants have also done so or have voiced their intention to do so.

The Ministry of Finance has on the table a bill proposed by non-profit foundations that manage social housing, such as Habitat3 or Provivienda. The entities – grouped under the ALIVAS umbrella – want to create a new legal figure with the aim of expanding this segment of the residential market in Spain, the "social housing providers". According to sources from the Spanish government, they explain to ARA, the intention is for the law to reach Congress "as soon as possible", and for the socialist group to process it because the process is "faster" and has "fewer procedures" if done through parties.

There is a sector in the State that is living a golden age, which is growing without yet having comprehensive regulation and which is increasingly relevant in the decision-making process of governments and Parliaments: public affairs consultancies. A type of bridge between the public and private worlds, which is unknown territory for a good part of the population and which in recent years has been proliferating strongly in Madrid, but also in Barcelona, ​​due to political fragmentation, the ever-increasing complexity of decision-making processes and the rise of economic and geopolitical crises. What do these companies do, however? Is it a professionalized sector? Why is it fertile ground for former politicians? El ARA has X-rayed the main companies established in the State, speaking withpeople from within the sector, professional associations, politicians, and also experts who point to the lack of regulation as the main problem.