The lack of talent and qualified personnel to fill job vacancies is not only a problem for companies, but also affects economic growth. The employers' association of the Vallès region, Cecot, has issued this warning and raised the issue in a report entitled Towards a sustainable labor market 38 proposals to address the problem, which has various facets, ranging from demographics to changes in the labor market. Among the proposals are aligning school hours with work schedules, promoting active and reversible retirement, and further encouraging teleworking, among others aimed at attracting more talent to companies.

It was a race against time, open until the very last minute. That's how the talks unfolded between the Spanish government and its partners to break up the omnibus decree that included the pension increase and the social safety net. This decree law was defeated in Congress last week by the votes of the PP and Junts because, despite supporting the increase in pension payments, neither group wanted to endorse the anti-eviction measures. Therefore, within the framework of the negotiations, it was crucial how the decree law was divided in two: that is, which measures from the overall social safety net—primarily subsidies for electricity bills—would be included with pensions and which with the anti-eviction measures. Why? Because anything related to pensions was sure to pass, while anything related to anti-eviction measures would be very difficult to pass, as has already been demonstrated by the announcement of Junts and the PP's votes against it.

Following the veto by Junts and the PP on the omnibus decree, the Spanish government has been forced to fragment it to salvage the pension increase and, on the other hand, has introduced measures favoring small property owners by suspending evictions to secure the votes of the PNV and curry favor. "These are all good measures," argued the Spanish government spokesperson, Elma Saiz, downplaying the backtracking that Moncloa has had to undertake on this occasion. after last week's setback in CongressAnd despite what she had previously said, she has separated pensions from anti-eviction measures in an attempt to protect them. However, they are far from guaranteed: while Junts (and also the PP) support the pension increase, and it is guaranteed, both Junts and the PP have already expressed their rejection of the decree that includes the social safety net. Nogueras herself posted a video on Instagram: "Pending reading the fine print, we at JxCat can say that we will vote against extending a measure that not only doesn't solve the problem, but is unfair, because who is paying the price for this social safety net, which the so-called Spanish left is so fond of talking about?" If they ultimately abstain, it would depend on the affirmative votes of Podemos, which opposed the measures to "protect" small property owners that the Spanish government has agreed upon with the PNV.

Last week, Congress rejected the pension increase and the so-called social shield to curb evictions, with votes from the PP, Junts, and Vox parties. Now, the Spanish government has been forced to break up the decree law in order to salvage, on the one hand, the increase in pensioners' purchasing power; and, on the other, it has included measures favoring "small property owners" to try to win over Junts and the PNV. This Tuesday, according to sources at La Moncloa (the Prime Minister's residence), the Spanish government approved two separate decree laws—which come into effect immediately—and which must be ratified by Congress within a month. The pensions decree has guaranteed support to pass (Junts and the PP voted against it because it was bundled with other measures), while it remains to be seen what will happen with the decree related to housing.

The more serious the problems, the more unbearable the tendency of political leaders to steer everything toward simplification becomes, ultimately generating grotesque attacks on the adversary that often leave the attacker in a worse position than the target.

Pensioners received their January pensions a few days ago, with the corresponding CPI increase. But in a few weeks, they could lose purchasing power after Congress rejected the decree that included the pension revaluation this Tuesday. What options does the Spanish government have to avoid this?

Since last Thursday, January 1st, Social Security has been applying an extra contribution, the so-called solidarity contribution, to salaries exceeding the maximum contribution base, which for 2026 will be €5,101.2 per month (€61,214.4 per year) after a 3.2% increase compared to the previous 3.9%. This contribution, which will come into effect in 2025 and be fully implemented in 2045, consists of an additional contribution on the portion of the salary that exceeds the maximum contribution base. It is applied in tiers and progressively. In 2025, the solidarity contribution was 0.92% for the salary bracket up to 10% above the maximum base, 1% for the bracket between 10% and 50% above the maximum base, and 1.17% for the bracket exceeding 0.5%. These contribution rates increase this year to 1.15%, 1.25%, and 1.46%, respectively. Given that the maximum contribution base will be €5,101.20 per month this year, the Social Security contribution rate for applying this solidarity fee will be 1.15% for salaries between €5,101.20 and €5,611.39, with the employee contributing 0.00%. If the salary is between €5,611.33 and €7,651.80 per month, the contribution rate will be 1.25% (1.04% paid by the employer and 0.21% by the employee), while for salaries exceeding €7,651.80 per month, the contribution rate will be 1.22% paid by the employer and 0.24% paid by the employee.

In a recent interview on a public television station in Tarragona, Sílvia Orriols, leader of Aliança Catalana, advocated for a profound reform of the current pension system. The alternative system championed by the far-right party proposes that workers receive their social security contributions directly. In other words, the pension fund would not be replenished by workers' contributions. Under this model, upon reaching retirement, the State would contribute a minimum amount to citizens, who would then have to supplement their pensions with private plans—those who have taken them out. Orriols criticized the "enormous" amount of money that "the State seizes from workers." According to the Aliança leader, this would allow citizens to "save much more." She had already floated this proposal in the Catalan Parliament a few weeks prior. In the Catalan chamber, the Aliança leader labeled the public pension system a "pyramid scheme of biblical proportions." According to the pro-independence leader, the model is "unsustainable" because it relies on contributions from active workers to pay the pensions of current retirees. And the arrival of immigrants, she emphasized, does not solve the structural problem. "Some naive people believed that immigration was the solution to an absurdity," she stated, asserting that "most immigrants not only do not contribute, nor will they contribute, anything to the public pension system, but they are also and will be beneficiaries of aid and benefits," without supporting this assertion with any data. "They will have free access to healthcare, education, public housing, and social services without having contributed to their maintenance or expansion, and this causes overcrowding, collapses, and a progressive degradation of public services," she continued.

I know this stance will generate criticism, but as a society we must face an uncomfortable reality: the pension system is unsustainable. In 2025, more than 40% of the state budget was allocated to pension payments, and yet it was necessary to take out a loan to cover the two December payments. We are living with a structural and permanent deficit. And far from stopping, spending will continue to rise: it has already been announced that pensions will increase by 2.7% in 2026.

This year, the Council of Ministers approved the revaluation of contributory pensions and the increase in the annual amount of non-contributory pensions. Specifically, for all purposes, the former have increased by 3.8%, and the latter have been updated to €7,905.80 per year, which amounts to €568.70 per month in 14 installments. But what are each of these pensions and how can they be applied for?

Only from shortsightedness can resentment against retirees and the elderly incubate. boomers in general, painting them as privileged beneficiaries of a splendid past of generous salaries and an opulent future assured thanks to owning an apartment and a juicy pension, reduced to the sentence "they have lived better than their parents."

We read it in the ARA (with our reading glasses, which we just lost and found). The dossierChallenges and policies in the age of longevity, published this Monday by CaixaBank Research, tells us that "to finance pensions it will be necessary to postpone the retirement age to 68 years." It seems that the fault lies with us, with the children of the baby boom, that not only are there too many of us to collect, but on top of that, when we reached the age of procreation, we didn't follow the example of our hardworking parents. My parents had six. I had one. Where are you going? In my childhood and adolescence, marked by the series Cone eight is enough (about the extended family of a widowed journalist, father of eight, living in Sacramento and making ends meet), we were often joked about, which we all picked up on as adults. "You're a oginet", they told you. It meant that your parents, poor, at the time without a cell phone, without Netflix, without heating, without cheap Japanese restaurants, had to spend the boredom and the cold in bed making love (hidden from their grandparents and the whole gang of children they already had). In the absence of condoms, the famous method of Dr. Ogino, which was based on abstaining the days close to ovulation and doing like rabbits the rest of the month. It was a method, of course, that failed more than an umbrella bought on the subway, and hence the children of the method that didn't work were called oginetes.

For many women, reaching retirement age does not mean, as it should, a well-deserved rest after decades of work, but rather the entry into a new stage of economic insecurity. Our pension system is, in essence, contributory: it is paid based on contributions. This means that if their work histories have been short, discontinuous, or with low wages, the pension will be lower. And this is precisely the case for many women who are currently over 65.

The aging of the population has led the Spanish government to seek solutions to address pensions. Therefore, for years, Madrid has been seeking to promote a hybrid model that allows people to begin receiving their pension while extending their working life. In other words, a system that allows people to work and be a pensioner simultaneously. After numerous failures, a new series of regulatory changes will come into effect starting April 1st to encourage these options.

The Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security has proposed to the social partners -main trade unions and employers' organisations- a temporary increase in contributions to fill the reserve fund, better known as the pension fund, which currently only has around 2,000 million euros, and to cope with the increase in the cost of benefits once the baby boomers retire, the generation born in the 1960s, which is the largest and which will also generate higher pensions than the current ones due to their working life.

The Social Security Minister, José Luis Escrivá, has taken 24 hours to admit that he was wrong in the statements he made on Thursday about the pensions of the baby boomer generation. While yesterday he assured that this generation born between the 50s and mid-70s would have to choose between collecting a lower pension or working more years, this Friday he has hastened to correct his own words. "Yesterday I did not have my best day", he admitted during the press conference to assess the unemployment data for June. "[My words] were misunderstood, I was thinking out loud", he added.

The pension system has long been in question. The structural unemployment of the Spanish economy, much higher than the European average (and aggravated by the last two crises, together with the progressive precariousness of the labour market in recent decades, which has harmed not only workers but also Social Security contributions), has led the pension system to a situation that is unsustainable over time. To this we must add two more factors. One, which is obvious, is the lengthening of life expectancy: many people live 30 or more years after retirement. The other factor is that the baby boom generation, which in Catalonia and Spain is the generation born between the late 50s and early 70s, is now approaching retirement age on a massive scale, which has made it imperative to act before there is a collapse. It is no longer enough to keep chasing the ball forward. The problem is already upon us, it is time to face the situation. And Europe has become serious. For all these reasons, the reform that the Spanish government has now introduced cannot surprise anyone. We were warned.

The Minister of Social Security, José Luis Escrivá, announced yesterday that the Spanish government is studying incentives for workers who decide to continue working beyond retirement age. Among the proposals are an annual payment of up to €12,000 or increasing pension payments by 4% for workers who decide to remain active despite having the right, due to age and years worked, to retire.

The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday the new maternity supplement when calculating pensions with the aim of putting an end to the gender gap. Until now only mothers who had had at least two children were entitled to a percentage increase in their pension. The new supplement, which will be a fixed monthly amount, will be received from the first child onwards. The Minister of Migration and Social Security, José Luis Escrivá, explained that the supplement will be almost 400 euros per year per child. The ministry estimates that it will benefit 30,000 women and will increase the average pension by 6%.