The Ministry of Labor has offered social partners compensation for companies most affected by the minimum wage increase, but this is conditional on an increase in the lowest wages and maintaining current staffing levels. The ministry, headed by Yolanda Díaz, proposes a 3.1% increase in the minimum wage in 2021, to €1,221 per month (paid in fourteen installments), exempt from income tax. This was announced by the Secretary of State for Labor, Joaquín Pérez Rey, in a press conference following a nearly three-hour meeting with social partners. The Deputy Minister of Labor clarified that this compensation is not "a gift." urbi et orbi"To all companies, even those that are not affected by the minimum wage. Pérez Rey has not gone into detail about what this compensation would consist of "with respect" to the work that the Treasury is doing, since its design is still being defined, but he has admitted that one of the possibilities is to introduce a tax deduction in the corporate tax.

Negotiations for a new increase in the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) will begin without internal disagreements within the Spanish government, especially regarding the affected ministries: Economy, Finance and Labor. portfolios that have previously been involved in more than one clash regarding the measure

Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz (Sumar), has asked the committee of experts on the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) to propose two different increases for 2026: one that does not include personal income tax, and another that does take this tax into account. In this way, Díaz avoids the clash that arose with the Ministry of Finance over the 2025 increase. The head of this ministry, María Jesús Montero (PSOE), suggested that with the latest approved increase, recipients of that income should already be taxed, something the ministerial team argued. Finally, the battle ended with a deduction for SMI recipients so they wouldn't pay personal income tax.

Given the lack of parliamentary support, the Spanish government decided to postpone the process until after the summer. the negotiation of the reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours per week. It is one of the great promises of the current legislature, especially for the person who has championed it from the very beginning, the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, who is also the visible face of Sumar, the minority partner in the coalition government.

As the uncertainty and concern about the proposals of the new US administration grow, a strange race has emerged in the Spanish Parliament to see who has the most social conscience. All of this opens a period of uncertainty and disorder that does not seem to have a very good prognosis. Donald Trump's initiatives have made me think these days of a famous sequence ofThe great dictator, by Charles Chaplin, where the actor, wearing a uniform and a Hitler-like moustache, plays with a large globe, moving it capriciously from here to there. It is difficult to predict how far the trade war on tariffs can go, but I suspect that Europe will be more capable of defending its economic interests than of being consistent with the path it had taken in terms of foreign policy, supporting Ukraine and other countries that, like the Baltic countries, consider their security compromised by the challenge of Russian expansionism, led by Puman. However, I am very afraid that in the end we will have to be realistic. I understand that the Spanish government wants to maintain the discourse of solidarity with President Zelensky's regime, especially after what it cost him to get started, when he was still hesitating whether to send war material - lethal, it was called, as if it could be of another kind - to support the Ukrainians and to defend the territorial integrity of his country.

I am stunned by this debate between the PSOE, which raised the minimum interprofessional wage by 61%, and its partners at Sumar, who are against this increase having the retention of personal income tax. ApparentlyThe brilliant Ot Serra and Andrea Zamorano explained it to us at the ARA–, it seems that every year, when the minimum wage is proposed, there is a "political agreement" so that it does not reach the new threshold and does not pay taxes, but this time "the Treasury has opted for the right". The leader of the PP has said: "Keeping half of the increase in the SMI is neither progressive nor social justice".

This morning Sanchez and Feijoo have had it, in the first control session of the year in Congress. Feijóo, of course, took advantage of the spectacle given yesterday by two ministers, the spokesperson, from the PSOE, and the vice-president, from Sumar, contradicting the press conference after the cabinet meeting, on the decision to make those earning the minimum wage pay personal income tax. And Sánchez has responded with the textbook: with the PP, workers who earned the minimum wage did not have the problem of having to pay taxes because the popular government froze it.

The announcement of the increase in the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) by 50 euros to reach 1,184 euros gross per month in 14 payments has come with a surprise: it turns out that for the first time a part of its recipients will have to pay taxes to the Treasury, something that had never happened before. Previous increases in the SMI were always accompanied by adjustments in the exempt minimum to avoid the IRPF eating up part of the increase. However, on this occasion it is estimated that 20% of recipients, half a million people throughout the State, will have to pay part of that money to the Treasury. Specifically, these are single people without children, who depending on the autonomous community of residence will have to return to the Treasury up to half of the increase, as is the case of Catalonia. That is, unlike the remaining 80%, their real increase could be reduced to 25 euros per month.

Never before has an increase in the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) generated a clash between the two partners of the coalition government, PSOE and Sumar, such as the one experienced in the last few hours. But what has unleashed the squabble has not been the increase in the SMI for 2025 – 50 euros per month, up to 1,184 euros gross – but the decision of the Ministry of Finance (PSOE), under the leadership of María Jesús Montero, not to adapt the minimum exemption in personal income tax to the increase in salary. The measure implies that for the first time a part of the people who receive a salary have to pay personal income tax, something that the Minister of Labor and leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, has been quick to censure: "I learned of the decision [of the Treasury] through the media and it has not been deliberated [in the council of ministers]," she declared.

The Spanish government's decision to set the minimum wage at €14,000 per annum is a milestone that was unthinkable only a few years ago. We have gone from a minimum wage of €10,304 in 2018, to €12,600 in 2019, €13.300 in 2020, €13,510 in 2021 and finally the €14,000 that will be applied retroactively as of January 1 this year. In total, this represents a 35% rise in 3 years, and the aim is for minimum wage to stand at 60% of the average salary before the next elections. According to government calculations, this will mean raising it again between €168 and €658. This was the commitment of the coalition deal between PSOE and Unidas Podemos.

Spain has taken another step towards making minimum wage 60% of the average wage. The Spanish government will approve an increase to minimum wage, which will go up to €14,000 per annum. It will be retroactive, starting from January 1. This places the State in seventh position within the European Union table of highest minimum wage and leaves Bulgaria and Latvia as the only two EU countries which, for now, have not increased minimum wage in 2022.

The erroneous vote of PP MP Alberto Casero, which allowed the labour law reform to be passed, left a bittersweet taste in Ministry of Labour ranks. Minister Yolanda Díaz sought the support of the parties that invested Pedro Sánchez until the last minute, in order to avoid relying on Ciudadanos. Now, however, another measure in labour matters can revive the mood within the ministry: a retroactive increase in minimum wage to €14,000 per annum (applicable from January 1).

"We have runaway inflation. Wages have to go up." Secretary general of Union UGT, Pepe Álvarez, has started the new year with a demand that he already tabled weeks before the Christmas campaign. This Tuesday, the union leader has once again demanded that in the face of rising inflation –the advanced year-on-year CPI for the month of December stood at 6.7%– and, in order not to lose purchasing power, it is necessary for workers to see their salaries increase much more. The visible face of the other major union (CCOO), Unai Sordo, has spoke along the same lines: "Spain cannot afford to lose purchasing power".

The discrepancies at the beginning of the year between the Minister of Labour, Yolanda Díaz, and the Ministers of Economy and Social Security, Nadia Calviño and José Luís Escrivá, on minimum wage have ended up being resolved by a commission of experts. The central government asked a commission formed by academics to settle the debate on whether minimum wage should be raised in 2021 in the midst of the crisis of the covid crisis or delay the rise.