The last time Pedro Sánchez managed to pass a national budget was in 2022, during the previous legislature. It was the budget for 2023. Since then, despite the start of a new legislature, the Spanish government has failed to pass any new budgets and, in fact, is headed for the end of its term – Pedro Sánchez maintains that the legislature will last until 2027 – without achieving this. The underlying reason is not only that Congress rejected the deficit and debt targets for 2026 this Thursday, the necessary step before drafting a budget, but also that Junts has closed the door to negotiating a budget for next year. Given that the electoral climate will be a major factor in 2026 and 2027, unless early national elections are called, it is difficult to imagine that the context will be more favorable for budget negotiations then. The only "window of opportunity" that some members of the Spanish executive foresee is the return of Carles Puigdemont, a very open scenario that is in the hands of the courts.

With no general state budget in 2024, or even in 2025, everyone is already looking ahead to 2026. The Spanish government is maintaining the 2023 public accounts, Pedro Sánchez's last, approved on December 20, 2022, postponed. The Spanish government intended to approve them. In fact, if the usual procedure is taken into account, Pedro Sánchez is even late in the process of preparing public accounts for 2026. In this scenario, The outbreak of the Santos Cerdán case has not helped at all., which has created a new rift in the always weak relationship between the Spanish government and its investiture partners, adding to the parliamentary instability that has engulfed the current legislature since the beginning. In fact, the leader of the ERC (Republic of Catalonia), Oriol Junqueras, has just warned that there will be no budget in Catalonia, but neither in Spain. If the agreement for singular financing is not resolved well and, in particular, the collection of personal income tax.