It is often said that in politics everything has been seen: unnatural alliances, sudden changes of position or leaders who move to another party. In fact, moving from one party to another is not exceptional in Catalonia. With the 'Procés', leaders from the PSC or ICV joined ERC, representatives from Cs joined the PP with the decline of the orange party, and now Junts officials are moving to Aliança. What is not usual are the changes of allegiance between parties located at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

Since it was put on the table, Vox has made the amnesty law one of its main battle horses, promising actively and passively that, if it comes to the Spanish government, it will "reverse" and "repeal" the norm immediately. The People's Party has also joined this idea, and its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in a dynamic that, analyzing the archives, is common among the populars: promising the repeal of PSOE laws to end up keeping them intact once they come to power —as happened in the past with the abortion law or same-sex marriage. Despite the constant insistence of the far-right on this supposed repeal, the threat clashes head-on with an insurmountable wall: the architecture of the rule of law. According to experts consulted by ARA, Vox's promise is legally unfeasible and the elimination of the law would have practically no effect on the accused. In fact, the party itself admits to ARA that it is aware of this legal wall.

The PSC, Junts, ERC, Comuns, and CUP have reached an agreement to reform the Parliament's regulations and incorporate the chamber's Code of Conduct, which outlines possible sanctions for deputies who violate it, as reported this Wednesday by El Periódico and confirmed by ARA. The reform, aimed at protecting against hate speech, would clarify reprimands based on the seriousness of the acts and the work, which falls to the Committee on the Status of the Deputy and the board: from 600 to 6,000 euros for serious infractions and from 6,001 to 12,000 euros for very serious ones.

Mallorcans have, or we have, as a society, a certain reputation for being apathetic and conformist. I won't say it's not a somewhat deserved reputation, but it has a more interesting flip side. This same society also forms a country of sensible and elegant people, with a deep allergy to bad manners, rudeness, exaggerated gestures, and violence in any form. For the citizens of this country called Mallorca, there are few things less interesting than losing one's composure and irony, losing one's temper, becoming solemn or intransigent. And let's not even mention becoming aggressive: all of this, in Mallorca, is frankly frowned upon.This country, despite what some say, exists, and it manifested itself again on Sunday in a massive and exemplary way through the streets of Palma. More than 70,000 people came out to demand that good sense be applied to tourism and real estate policies. The current model is extractive and parasitic, with large profits concentrated in a few hands and a very long list of social problems that citizens/taxpayers suffer. Speculation, the impossibility for a large part of the population to access housing, the expulsion of people who literally cannot afford to live here, growing inequalities, job insecurity, premature abandonment of studies, overpopulation, coexistence difficulties, and social fracture. It was against all this that the Majorcans demonstrated this Sunday.The success of the call – by the platform Menys Turisme, Més Vida, with the support of 145 entities – materialized in a true human wave (as you can read inAra Balears) that marched through the center of Palma without insults, without tension, with a cheerful tone and impeccable civic attitude. The protest was truly historic, comparable to few in Mallorca's recent history. Faced with a mobilization of this magnitude, business owners and politicians can only do one sensible thing: get to work on the corrections they are being asked for.On the other hand, what they did was send the National Police to beat citizens. Provocations, impediments and, finally, police charges with batons and rubber bullet shots, resulting in several minor injuries and a photojournalist seriously injured in the head. An absolute and intolerable disgrace, the primary responsibility for which lies with the delegate of the Spanish government, Alfonso Rodríguez, who should indeed resign, as is demanded from all sides. The PP and Vox government should not think, however, that they benefit from this: they wanted exactly this, to be able to accuse the demonstration of being “violent”. They had been trying for weeks to disqualify and criminalize the protests, and Vice President Antoni Costa went as far as to invite those who request a reduction in tourism to “pack their bags”. On Sunday, the Majorcans set an example of dignity, and their rulers, of indignity and ineptitude. Sunday, too, something broke between the Majorcans and their institutional representatives.

It was not the first territory where the PP and Vox agreed to a joint government, as Castilla y León had done a year and four months earlier, but the Valencian Community will indeed be the first autonomous community to include the criterion of "national priority" in its budgets. Specifically, in various allocations for the granting of social aid.

Parliament acted this Tuesday against the violations of the Code of Conduct in the hemicycle. After nine months and dragging four files –one from Aliança Catalana and three from Vox– before the Committee on the Status of Deputies, the body chaired by Antoni Castellà (Junts) agreed, in a secret closed-door session, to classify the actions of the leader of Aliança Catalana, Sílvia Orriols, as a minor offense. Now the committee will transfer this opinion to the bureau of Parliament, which will be responsible for deciding and applying the final sanction. This punishment can range from a public reprimand to a financial fine of between 600 and 12,000 euros.

The US President, Donald Trump, and the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, are two allies of Vox who have been a constant pain in the neck for the far-right party. Until now, Santiago Abascal's formation had responded timidly to the US president's outbursts, which had allowed the rebel former leaders or left-wing formations to accuse Vox of being Trump's "slaves". However, this week the party has slightly raised its voice to distance itself from the US president's threat to cut trade with Spain or Trump's harassment of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, to whom, with an ironic tone, he said he wanted "a restraining order". The objective is to consolidate a shift that has been debated for some time in the Vox leadership to put an end to the meek image the party had projected until now. The culmination was between March and April, when Israel carried out attacks against Christians. It was then that the national leadership made a decision, according to sources familiar with the matter consulted by ARA: "We have to distance ourselves, like Meloni".

Any information that alters the perception of reality is news. A CEO poll has become an event because it attributes to Aliança Catalana an unusual jump from 2 seats to a range of 23-25 (third force). A punishment for Junts that has just been rounded off with ERC's conversion into the second force. The PSC, with a certain setback, continues to lead the situation. The left of the left, Comuns and company, remains in limbo.

The Popular Party has a closet full of flags that it brings out into public debate as it finds they can be useful. It parades them, surrounds them with noise, forces false disjunctions and equally false debates with them, and then brings out the next one. It doesn't matter if it's immigration, Catalonia and the Catalan language, the territorial organization of the State, the fight against corruption, the various negations it carries with it, or the defense of what it calls the family unit. It all consists of managing to parade a flag, or several flags simultaneously, and making a racket.Now we are talking about the unborn conceived, a grotesque concept that aims for a fetus to be another member of the aforementioned family unit. In this case, the flag comes from the looms of Ayuso and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, experts in victorious flags, who have already legislated on the matter in the Assembly of Madrid (what an ironic name, Assembly of Madrid). Vox also wants to dispute it, this flag, because it suits them very well: after all, anti-abortionism and the denial of women's reproductive rights occupy a prominent place in the fascist/neo-Francoist ideology they promote from Abascal's party. There is also a component of stale sexism and patriarchalism: the creature begins to exist from the moment the father impregnates the lucky mother, or perhaps already when the father unzips his fly. As if all this were not enough, it is a discourse that is also supported by the MAGA movement and Trumpism. Thus, the unborn conceived is a finding that is in tune with the spirit of the times and deserves the nihil obstat of the new fundamentalism. Oil in a crucible.The idea of counting an embryo as a family member, besides being macabre and aberrant, is also very accurate. A few weeks ago, at the proposal of Vox, the unborn concept was discussed in the Balearic Parliament – a avant-garde chamber, since it is presided over by an far-right hothead with the support of the PP – and it was already seen that the idea is so good that they should also include dead relatives within the family unit. Thus we would have the unborn concept and the deceased already buried: all together they would form an ideal and very complete family unit.It goes without saying that the law approved in the Community of Madrid under Ayuso's absolute majority, and which Feijóo promises to introduce into a state-wide law if he governs, represents an alarming regression in rights and freedoms. It also raises questions: how does the unborn conceptus reconcile with Vox's national priority? And with Aznar's national majority? More specifically: is an immigrant embryo a member of a family unit? And if so, does this family unit, which counts its fetuses, deserve to be part of the national majority and, therefore, receive privileges reserved for citizens of national priority? Vox has already answered no. Or perhaps someone doubted that, among embryos, there are also first and second class ones? The problem with parading so many flags at once is that they trip over each other and everything.

Iván Espinosa de los Monteros y de Simón, son of the Marquis of Valtierra, entered politics with Vox and was expelled last Wednesday, culminating a power struggle with the state leadership of Santiago Abascal that had been going on for three years. Everything took a turn for the worse when the right-wing parties lost the 2023 elections and he could not become a minister – which is what he desired – but the clash already stemmed from the electoral lists, where Abascal vetoed several names he proposed for key positions in the state and municipal elections, according to informed sources consulted. Once he has been eliminated, there are no longer any critics within the far-right party and the attempt at internal rebellion to request an extraordinary congress has completely ended. But the rebellion could end up being external, in the form of electoral competition if Espinosa and his acolytes opt to form another party, as several of the former leaders have publicly stated.

"Whoever comes to commit crimes must know they have no place in our society." Read in isolation and without any context, it might currently be difficult to guess which leader or political party this phrase might come from. The reality, however, is that it is an excerpt from the Catalan PP's position paper for its 16th congress just a few days ago. This discursive forcefulness brings an evidence to the table and introduces a lively debate: Spanish politics, as well as Catalan politics, is shifting towards an increasingly radicalized right.

1. Juanma Moreno Bonilla said he did not want to repeat as president of Andalusia if Vox had to be in the government. In the end, like so many other autonomous communities where the Popular Party won but fell short, Andalusia will also have a coalition government of the right with the far-right. Moreno Bonilla, against his better judgment, has swallowed his principles and had to give in. He has ended up accepting Abascal's positions and now has a vice-president from Vox in his government who corrects him before the investiture. “And what you'll get, my dear”, as they would say in Seville, in another popular expression that must already be close to some red flag.

It has been almost four years – October 2022 – since Congress approved what has been dubbed the "nets law." It is not a law as such, but rather a provision included in the democratic memory law that recognizes Spanish nationality for descendants of exiles from the Civil War and Francoism. Given the volume of requests – especially from Latin America – and the limited resources of consulates abroad, where applications must be processed, hundreds of thousands are still pending resolution. However, it is in the media spotlight these days because the PP and Vox have used it as an argument to accuse the Spanish government of trying to alter the electoral roll for the upcoming Spanish elections. What exactly are we talking about?

Alberto Núñez Feijóo had a hope with Juanma Moreno Bonilla. He was the regional baron with the most possibilities, according to the polls, of maintaining the absolute majority and continuing to govern without the concurrence of Vox. But the result of the elections dispelled any doubt that the destiny of the PP requires having to coexist with the far-right, even its most moderate leader, as has been demonstrated with this Thursday's pact which cedes important spaces of power to Santiago Abascal's party in Andalusia. With Juanma Moreno's new coalition government with the far-right, the PP-Vox coalition becomes the regional executive model that governs the most people in the State, specifically 27.3%, ahead of popular governments on their own, which rule over 20.8% of citizens, and PP governments with far-right support, which affect 16.8%.

PP and Vox have closed the last of the pending pacts. After reaching an agreement in Extremadura, Aragon, and Castilla y León, Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party and Santiago Abascal's party are closing the circle in Andalusia with the investiture of Juanma Moreno thanks to the votes of the far-right. The popular candidate did not overcome a first vote two days ago, but this Thursday afternoon he has managed to leave the Andalusian Parliament as president after having overcome the last hurdles of the negotiation with Vox 'in extremis'. Once again, the "national priority" and the incorporation of the far-right into the government have been part of the core of the pact and are the two main concessions that the PP has been making to Vox for months to maintain regional power.

First, the president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, had to go through Vox's address book, despite the difficulties; then it was the turn of Jorge Azcón's Aragon and Alfonso Fernández Mañueco's Castilla y León. But the greatest exponent of the PP moderates, the Andalusian president, the "Sorayist Juanma Moreno Bonilla, who will also yield to Vox's demands, as he himself has admitted and as the state leadership wants. The agreement is being finalized, but the only doubt remaining is the timing, that is, whether he will capitulate for this Thursday's investiture session or postpone it further, playing hard to get for public opinion. In any case, according to sources familiar with the negotiations between the PP and Vox consulted by ARA, the dilemma was clear from the start: "Either you accept the conditions or elections," said the Vox negotiating team.

It has been more than six weeks since the Andalusian elections that linked the popular Juanma Moreno Bonilla to Vox. The acting president of Andalusia, one of the barons of the PP most reluctant to agree with the far-right, has been forced to negotiate with them because fell two seats short of an absolute majority. However, the talks have not yet reached a satisfactory conclusion. This was confirmed this Tuesday afternoon in the first investiture attempt in the Andalusian Parliament. Santiago Abascal's party voted against making Moreno Bonilla president, arguing that they have not yet closed a programmatic agreement with the PP. The far-right party has blamed the baron popular for having arrived too late –Moreno Bonilla waited more than three weeks after the elections to sit down and talk for the first time–.

Pedro Sánchez is not exactly preparing a "tupinada", but rather designing through "electoral engineering" a plan to win the next state elections thanks to the vote from abroad. This is the thesis defended by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who this Tuesday wanted to place the Popular Party one step below Vox in the accusations of future electoral fraud that both parties have been fueling for some time. Feijóo, who was interviewed by the media outlet La7 Región de Murcia, thus specified his words on Monday on esRadio, where he openly criticized that the so-called "law of the clean" – a provision included in the law of democratic memory – is designed to alter the electoral roll in favor of the PSOE.

The floodgates of political contempt have long been open in Spain, and the water of mutual contempt between the opposition and the government is at a record level. The worst thing is not that they mutually detest each other and permanently show it, but the effects this has on public opinion which will one day go to vote.

PP, Vox and Junts yesterday demanded Sánchez's resignation or that he submit to a confidence vote through a vote that has no practical value because Sánchez will neither resign nor submit to a confidence vote. The vote has political value, of course, because 3 years ago Junts voted in favor of Sánchez's investiture and yesterday asked him to step down in a vote. And at the same time, it is no victory for the PP, because it does not have Junts's votes for a motion of censure which, that one sí, could bring down Sánchez. And despite everything, yesterday, at the moment of the results, both benches were shouting and applauding.