Recently, the leader of the PSOE in Extremadura proposed to President María Guardiola that she cancel her agreement with Vox to govern and that the PSOE would support her on the budgets. A similar suggestion was also made by the PSOE candidate in Castilla y León during the electoral campaign. The formula is not free of tactical maneuvering as it seeks to reinforce the idea of a voluntarist pact between PP and Vox after the elections, precisely to avoid having to govern in a coalition.
But beyond the tactical maneuvering, it may seem strange that an opposition party would support the government’s budgets from its rival. After all, the budget is a principal law, since it sets the operational margins for governance through public policies. In this sense, it is the law that most clearly translates a government’s worldview, its ideology, into public policy; with this law, proclamations or principles are not launched, but the real priorities of a government are shown. One could say that a fairer society is desired and that help is given to the most vulnerable, but only in the budget are we able to see whether dependency policies are favored, for example, or whether budgets for education or public health are increased.
In this context, it is strange that an opposition party decides to support the public accounts of its rival in government. But, is it really that strange?
The history of budget pacts in Spain
One way to answer is to look at the votes that budget laws have received. The agreement or inclusivity index has been used, whose dynamics are explained here. In short: the index ranges from zero (only the deputies who participate in a monocolor government or a coalition support the law or abstain) to one (all members of the chamber vote in favor or abstain). Naturally, values close to zero imply that negotiations have taken place and accords have been built with smaller groups, perhaps not ideologically distant from the ruling party or parties. In the case of budget laws, a caveat must be noted. Since these are laws that are usually approved with votes on the article text or groups of articles, the agreement or inclusivity index is constructed as the average of the votes cast.
“The forces that compose the governments and some opposition parties make an effort to negotiate and agree on the approval of budgets”
Let us look at the data coming from the BADELEY database, which records around ten thousand laws approved since 1977. If we take the 690 budgets that have been approved between 1978 and 2025 in the seventeen regional chambers and Congress, it turns out that on average the agreement or inclusivity index is 0.42. This indicates that the forces that make up the governments and some opposition parties make an effort to negotiate and agree on budget approval. The motives can be varied. For opposition parties it may be beneficial to convey to their potential voters the idea that they have introduced changes in the budget that could benefit them and therefore vote in favor or abstain. They may also be motivated by appearing as a responsible party by agreeing on measures for the common good. The government may also be interested in appearing as a player that does not use a parliamentary bulldozer (if it holds an absolute majority) and that incorporates sectors of the opposition in the management of the common good.
Be that as it may, it seems that even in the approval of budgets agreements are built in Spanish politics. Moreover, the rare thing is to approve budgets with the sole participation of the governing parties. This only happens in 50 of the 690 budgets approved during the democratic period (7%). In the remaining 640 cases there has been some form of negotiation and agreement among rivals. An extra fact: in 35 budget laws (5%), all representatives in the chamber who voted did so in favor or abstained. This has happened on occasions in Aragón, Castilla-La Mancha, Canary Islands, Catalonia, Comunitat Valenciana, Extremadura, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, the Basque Country and La Rioja. Only in eight cases were there coalition governments. In fourteen cases the PSOE governed alone and in seven cases the PP governed alone.
Let us recall that budget approval is, probably, the least likely scenario for our political groups to build agreements. And yet, it is negotiated and agreed. It occurs with a fairly mid-level frequency in Navarre and the Basque Country, which also lead the degree of political agreement in Spain, and in Castilla-La Mancha. It is less frequent for parties to cooperate to approve budgets in the Valencian Community, Andalusia and La Rioja.
Also the Congress shows a certain degree of parliamentary cooperation among rivals. The average agreement index to approve budgets is lower than in the autonomous communities (0.37), although the chart shows a decreasing trend, as has been observed in legislative activity in this chamber as well. Let us see how this cooperation varies by party blocks. When the UCD governs, the agreement is the highest with an average of 0.78 in the index. When the PSOE governs alone, the average agreement is 0.36. When the PP governs, the average is 0.28. Only solitary governments that can operate under different conditions are counted.
“The rare thing is that budgets are approved with the sole participation of the governing parties”
These data show that, in the most unlikely scenario for cross-party agreement, Spanish politics, with varying intensity, has managed to build partial (or total) agreements in which the governing forces and some (or all) of the opposition have chosen to cooperate from the natural and expected disagreement in any democracy.
Political issues receive 33% of mentions (housing at 22%) as Spain’s first problem, according to the CIS barometer of June 2026. There is discontent with politics that spills into democracy as a form of government, which has fragile support from about a third of the population. And yet, more than half (54%) of the citizenry fairly agrees with the statement “I would have a more positive view of politics if there were more agreement among rival parliamentarians” (62% among declared PSOE voters, 61% among Sumar voters, 57% among PP voters, and 45% among Vox voters). Perhaps the constant noise, the lack of respect, the shouting, the insults, the insinuations, the brawls in the chambers hide that there is also collaboration among rivals, even at times and in some territories, in the least expected scenario. Perhaps, if this dimension of politics were more visible (and the deafening noise around us were reduced), there would be less disaffection with democracy and we would help avert a serious problem.
