The First Vice-President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, has lowered this Wednesday her initial commitment to bring the General State Budgets for 2026 to Congress in the first quarter and now she limits herself to assuring that the budget project will reach the Chamber throughout the year, a rectification that the PP has taken advantage of to call her a "textbook incompetent".
During the government control session in Congress, the general secretary of the PP, Miguel Tellado, the group's spokesperson in the Lower House, Ester Muñoz, and the ‘popular’ deputy Elías Bendodo have questioned Montero about whether she intends to keep her word to present the 2026 accounts and put an end to the budget extension in which Spain has already chained three fiscal years.
Montero had committed to registering the project in the first three months of the year, which already implied doing so months late with respect to the ordinary calendar, which marks the submission of the accounts to the Cortes in September for their definitive approval in December. Added to this is that the vice president will be the PSOE candidate in the Andalusian elections scheduled before the summer, which will force her to leave her position in the Ministry of Finance.
“Are you going to bring all the Budgets at once?”
Tellado has recalled that, throughout the current legislature, Montero has been announcing the imminent presentation of different Budget projects that have never come to be debated in the chamber and has ironically asked her: “Which Budgets are you going to present, those for 2024, those for 2025, those for 2026, all together or really none?”.
Immediately after, the PP leader has hammered home his criticism accusing the Treasury minister of being “utterly incompetent” for having managed to push through only three Budget bills in eight years.
In her response, the vice president has defended that the extension of the accounts in force for three years “is fully constitutional” and has assured that the Executive continues working “to bring a Budget this year”.
At the same time, the minister has stressed that the absence of a new budget project has not prevented the Government from deploying measures in areas such as housing or to respond to the economic impact of successive crises, citing as an example that derived from the war in Iran.
In his turn for rebuttal, Tellado has once again stressed that Montero has only defended three Budgets in eight years in Congress and has concluded his intervention with a new disqualification: “You are a textbook incompetent, a textbook of resistance”, thus linking his criticism with the title of the book by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
Vox charges against the tax pressure
In the same control session, the general secretary of Vox's parliamentary group, José María Figaredo, has used his question to the minister to denounce the tax burden borne by taxpayers in Spain.
Figaredo has pointed out that in the last five years three and a half million people have arrived in the country and has accused the Executive of using this population increase to “dress up public accounts” and give the impression that the economy is progressing, when, according to him, citizens “are poorer” every day. “It seems there is money for everything, except for Spaniards,” he lamented.
Montero has replied that the tax burden in Spain is 3.5 points below the euro zone average and has defended that taxes serve to sustain social justice and guarantee equal opportunities throughout the territory.