It has become commonplace to see the Spanish government lose votes or need to reach agreements with multiple political parties. But it was ten years ago that the PP and the PSOE began to face this dilemma. The elections of December 20, 2015, led to unprecedented fragmentation in the Congress of Deputies and ended the historic two-party system: the PP lost 83 seats, while Podemos and Ciudadanos—from Catalonia—entered the lower house with 69 and 40 deputies, respectively. Despite their obvious political differences, on election night both parties offered the same diagnosis: Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, proclaimed that a "new Spain" had been "born," and Albert Rivera, the most visible figure of Ciudadanos, celebrated the beginning of a "new political era of hope and optimism." Neither project has that strength today—Ciudadanos has even disappeared—but the two-party system has not been restored. Now Vox and Sumar have taken up the mantle to consolidate a system with four national parties coexisting with the string of regional parties that are also key to governance.

From the author of "It is the mayor who wants the residents to be the mayor." and of "Very Spanish and very Spanisharrives in bookstores The art of governing (Almuzara, 2025). Mariano Rajoy presented his new book Wednesday evening, which, according to his own definition, is "a reflection" of his "way of being, thinking, and seeing life." "It's impossible to read this sentence and not hear Rajoy," remarked Alberto Núñez Feijóo during the event, referring to one of the reflections included by the former president of the Spanish government and of the People's Party (PP), namely, "the only serious thing is to be serious."

Last year, the Spanish courts blocked the Andorran judicial investigation into Operation Catalunya by closing the letter rogatory. The World The case seeking the indictment of former Spanish President Mariano Rajoy and former Interior and Finance Ministers Jorge Fernández Díaz and Cristóbal Montoro has now been reactivated, according to information obtained by ARA. Judge Stéphanie Garcia has again issued letters rogatory in Spain to the competent judicial authority to summon the political and judicial leaders of the Andorran branch of this alleged anti-independence plot.

Today marks two years since Pedro Sánchez lost the elections but ended up governing thanks to the fluke of the seven Junts deputies. Losing but ultimately winning is something the PP hasn't forgiven Sánchez for, having already won a vote of no confidence against Mariano Rajoy in 2018. Losing and governing, winning a vote of no confidence, are two things that have never happened before.

Three months ago, with the secret investigation against him already in its final stretch, but without the case of alleged trafficking in laws in the Ministry of Finance having put him on the ropes yet, Cristóbal Montoro (Jaén, 1950) appeared in Congress to give explanations about the Catalunya operation, where he still denied all accusationsThe PP's use of the Interior Ministry during Mariano Rajoy's term for its particular dirty war against political adversaries, such as the independence movement, is under full parliamentary and judicial scrutiny. Next year, the National Court will try Jorge Fernández Díaz for the Kitchenen case, a PP member. However, until now, Montoro, despite the suspicions against him and the indictment by an Andorran court for alleged pressure on Banca Privada de Andorra (BPA), had managed to escape scrutiny for the irregular practices of that period. The situation has changed this week with The indictment of the former Minister of Finance and members of his team by a Tarragona courtA judicial move that has opened a can of worms regarding Montoro. How did he get to this point?

While the PSOE is renewing its leadership to survive the Santos Cerdán case, the PP is using him at the party congress, which started this Friday, to predict a change of course. Alberto Núñez Feijóo has worked hard until the very last moment, with the transaction of amendments, to avoid any crack that could tarnish the image of unity he wants to project at a conclave where he faces no internal opposition. The alleged corruption cases of the Socialists have contributed to this closing of ranks, which on the first day of the PP congress was staged with the interventions of former PP presidents of the Spanish government, José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, who appeared together on stage at the Ifema Madrid trade fair pavilion. However, the differences between them were quick to surface. As usual, the harshest speech was Aznar's, who warned the PSOE that the price of coming to power by making pacts with the pro-independence parties, which he called "criminals," would also mean ending up in prison. "If you negotiate budgets in a prison, you associate with inmates and negotiate an amnesty with criminals; don't be surprised if you end up in prison because that's your environment," he asserted days after the former number three of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) was admitted to the Soto del Real penitentiary center for the alleged commissionsil plot.

If we're honest, we must agree that only a magnitude 8 earthquake can prevent a majority formed by the PP and Vox in the next Spanish elections. Go away, Mr. Gonzalez. Aznar's 94-95 (with a media conspiracy to expose the dirty laundry of Felipe González's government) and the street unrest that took place against Zapatero (demonstrations against dialogue with ETA, gay marriage, the return of the Salamanca papers in Catalonia, etc.). Feijóo is convinced he can step on the gas and then, from the Moncloa Palace, he'll be able to brake, just as his predecessors did. Let's remember that Aznar made a pact with CiU and the PNV, and Rajoy didn't repeal the emblematic laws of Zapatero's administration. The question is: will Feijóo really have the room to turn things around, given a partner like Vox and pressure from Ayuso?

Just two blocks from the Congress of Deputies and with Alberto Núñez Feijóo still seated in the chamber, José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy briefly met at a meeting organized by the Freedom and Democracy Group, made up of Latin American leaders and former presidents who, at least in the image of Aznar, are united. at the gates of the party congress, of the two former Spanish presidents with the current leader of the PP, that the control session has come to an end. "Things are what they are," Aznar justified in a brief speech in the auditorium of the Ateneo de Madrid when he excused himself for not being able to stay. Before leaving, however, he left a warning for Feijóo.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo is seeking to put his house in order before the final assault on Moncloa, but let's not fool ourselves, Congress is merely a domestic matter, a way to resolve all the internal crises that may arise between now and the elections and reach an understanding, albeit temporary, between the two on the one hand, and Juanma Moreno Bonilla on the other, with him positioned in the middle as a kind of forced synthesis. The congress is brought forwardHowever, for a reason. And that is that the PP believes it has already found the strategy that will inevitably lead it to the Moncloa, and therefore it is simply a matter of being prepared for when the moment arrives. And what is that strategy? 1994-1995.

The Spanish government has increased its average real investment in Catalonia by approximately €158.9 million annually since Pedro Sánchez took office, compared to the period under Mariano Rajoy. This increase is due, in part, to the rise in investment in Catalonia that appears in the general state budget since Sánchez took office. In fact, the fact that the total budgeted investment has grown more than the total investment actually invested means that the current government's execution rate is significantly lower than that of the previous PP administration.

Despite the PP's efforts to deny its existence, the maneuvers of the state's sewers during Mariano Rajoy's governments are accumulating ever more evidence. New audio published this Wednesday by RAC1In fact, it directly implicates the former Spanish president in the Kitchen operation, the operation paid for with secret funds to steal information about the party's corruption from former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas. It concerns a September 2014 conversation between María Dolores de Cospedal and José Manuel Villarejo. "I know that they had previously found, and more or less cleaned out, everything he had," the former PP secretary general says at one point, supposedly about Bárcenas. She adds: "The president told me, no one else did."

If Jorge Fernández Díaz is capable of lying and saying that he does not recognize that conversation with Villarejo that we have all heard ("I will deny, even under torture, that that meeting ever took place"), it is not surprising that yesterday he lied saying that the Catalunya operation did not exist. After all, he also says that he knows nothing about the Kitchen case (the Bárcenas papers), for which the prosecutor is asking for 15 years in prison and for him to be suspended from membership by his own party.

Former Spanish President Mariano Rajoy appeared again before a high court investigating events that occurred during his mandate. It was the Congressional commission of inquiry into the Catalonia operation and the dirty war of the Spanish state against the Catalan independence movement. In previous cases he had testified before another Congressional commission, for the Kitchen corruption plot; before the National Court, for the Gürtel corruption scandal, and before the Supreme Court, in the trial against the leaders of the Proceso. In all cases he has done the same: claim complete ignorance of what he is being asked, although in all cases it concerns facts directly related to his functions as a senior leader of the Popular Party or as President of the Spanish government. He knows nothing, he was just passing by. Imbued with the character that he himself has decided to project in public (a rancid and absent-minded gentleman who could be in some Alfonso Paso farce, like The Extremadurans touch each other either Teach a scoundrel) and that public opinion, and especially the media, decided to buy him some time ago, he lets out a few ironic remarks, he puts on airs, he pretends to be a little annoyed for having gotten in the way, and that's enough. In this absurd way he goes through the days and the appearances, without having to assume, for the moment, responsibility for anything that happened while he was in the political front line. Everyone finds it very funny, and now that he has reminded Rufián about the 155 coins, he has even managed to make many of the independentists he ordered beaten on October 1st laugh (he also declared that he had neither ordered nor known anything about the police charges of that day).

Former Spanish President Mariano Rajoy appeared again before a high court investigating events that occurred during his term in office. It was the Congressional commission of inquiry into Operation Catalonia and the dirty war of the Spanish state against Catalan independence. In previous cases he had testified before another Congressional commission (for the Kitchen corruption plot), before the National Court (for the Gürtel corruption scandal) and before the Supreme Court, in the trial against the leaders of the Proceso. In all cases he has done the same: claim complete ignorance of what he is being asked, although in all cases it concerns facts directly related to his functions as a senior leader of the Popular Party or as President of the Spanish government. He knows nothing, he was just passing by. Imbued with the character that he himself has decided to project in public (a rancid and absent-minded gentleman who could be in some Alfonso Paso farce, like The Extremadurans touch each other either Teach a scoundrel) and that public opinion, and especially the media, decided to buy him some time ago, he lets out a few ironic remarks, he puts on airs, he pretends to be a little annoyed for having gotten in the way, and that's enough. In this absurd way he goes through the days and the appearances, without having to assume, for the moment, responsibility for anything that happened while he was in the political front line. Everyone finds it very funny, and now that he has reminded Rufián about the 155 coins, he has even managed to make many of the independentists he ordered beaten on October 1st laugh (he also declared that he had neither ordered nor known anything about the police charges of that day).

"I have no knowledge of the existence of a so-called Catalunya operation," Mariano Rajoy said in a statement to the commission investigating the dirty war against the independence movement in Congress. The former president of the Spanish government and the PP has denied being aware of anything, as he did when he was questioned as a witness in the Gürtel trial in the summer of 2017, and in the lower house in another commission of inquiry into Operation Kitchen at the end of 2021. "I cannot become a commentary. I have no business here, although I am very comfortable," he stressed in his particular style.

On Thursday night Mariano Rajoy was the star guest ofThe anthill. The audience of the programme showed an exalted enthusiasm for his visit. The claca celebrated all his jokes and answers with a suspicious immediacy and passion. Throughout the interview, Pablo Motos addressed him with a familiarity that was very inappropriate, especially because Rajoy always addressed him as "usted". This discordance in tone was striking and revealed Motos's usual need to show himself close to power. The questions he asked him to promote his collection of presidential speeches also revealed his unconditional and servile devotion. Motos wanted to please him, but also use him to attack Sánchez's government. He was looking for someone who would endorse all the criticisms that he usually launches from his programme whenever he has the opportunity.How would you solve the housing problem?", it will demand. The information will be required with the concern of explaining to the audience that that response was the right one. The problem is that Motos obliges that Rajoy is going to be president anyway, and that he will have the right moment to fix the problem when he had to. PP es vivia millor. Li feia las ques como se fos el'oracle dels Déus, prescindint la biaix en l'focament. Motos interpreted the six answers with examples of the most irrefutable logic, sense that in that discourse there was an ideological charge. democrats that He assured that he had lost and had examples of his good government. Finally, everything is going to win a medal for the management of the disaster of the Prestige, in contrast to what happened with the DANA. Motos considered him a brilliant speaker, although, in his explanations on the same programme, Rajoy was more boring and made outdated jokes.

An Andorran judge has charged the former Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy and his Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, for allegedly pressuring Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) in the framework of Operation Catalunya. The investigation derives from a complaint filed in 2020 by the entity Drets and the Institut de Drets Humans d'Andorra, and which the former president of BPA Higini Cierco and also the Pujol family joined as injured parties. The judge has given Rajoy and Fernández Díaz 15 days to find an Andorran lawyer and also announced former Secretary of State of the Interior Francisco Martínez and former director of the National Police Ignacio Cosidó were also under investigation, El Mundo reported and the plaintiffs have later confirmed.

It was imaginable that Mariano Rajoy would deny the existence of the PP's slush fund - he already did so in 2017 in his appearance at the Gürtel trial that ended his political career - but no less expected was that he would respond to the accusations of former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas, obsessed with implicating the Spanish ex-president. "What we are going through is a disgrace," Rajoy exploded in his statement at the trial of what he has wanted to call Mr. Bárcenas's Papers, rather than The PP's Papers, preferred by the former treasurer. Rajoy has maintained silence until Wednesday, when he has denied using dirty money for party purposes. He has used words like "delirium" and "surrealism" and, as a culmination of the statements of the main former leaders of the PP, has portrayed Bárcenas as a person cornered by justice seeking revenge without evidence.

With his wife, Rosalía Iglesias, in prison after being sentenced for her implication in the Gürtel plot, the ex-treasurer of the PP, Luis Bárcenas, has decided to let the cat out of the bag and expose party heavyweights in court. Just five days before the start of the trial at the National Court for the PP's slush fund (next Monday), Bárcenas has confessed and has broken the truce he maintained with former Spanish President Mariano Rajoy. In a letter sent to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, confirms the intention to collaborate with the prosecution in all present and future investigations, including the Kitchen plot, which also affects the former PP leader. According to the text, advanced by El País and El Mundo and to which ARA has had access, the ex treasurer claims that Rajoy was a "perfectly aware" of the opaque accounting in his party to collect cash envelopes, and accuses him of having destroyed a part of the so-called "Bárcenas papers" in early 2009 at a meeting the two held at party headquarters.