The Senate gives the green light to the Dependency and Disability Law

When the Senate introduces amendments to a bill or proposal approved by the Congress, the final approval follows a clearly regulated path in the Constitution and the Rules of both Chambers. Essentially, the Senate makes modification proposals, but the Congress retains the final word and decides, by simple majority, which amendments it accepts and whether it maintains its own text.

1. Basic constitutional framework

The Constitution assigns the legislative function to the General Courts and provides for a non-symmetrical bicameral procedure:

• The Congress is the chamber of first reading and the one that makes the final decision.
• The Senate acts as a reviewing chamber: it can approve, veto, or amend the submitted text.

Article 90 of the Constitution (cited and developed by the Senate Rules) sets the deadlines for the Senate to exercise its veto or amendment powers. The Senate Rules, in the passage referring to this constitutional provision, expressly provide that the President qualifies the bills and proposals sent by the Congress, refers them to committee, and opens the period for submitting veto proposals and amendments “to facilitate compliance with the deadlines established in article 90.2 of the Constitution.”

2. Phase in the Senate and return to Congress

Once the text is approved in the Congress and sent to the Senate:

• The Board and Presidency of the Senate qualify the bill or proposal, determine the procedure (ordinary or urgent), send it to the competent committee, and open the period for veto proposals and amendments.
• After this process, the Senate Plenary can:
  • Approve the text as is.
  • Introduce amendments (partial modifications of the articles).
  • Agree on a veto (rejection of the entire text).

If the Senate introduces amendments, the text returns to the Congress accompanied by a message detailing those modifications.

3. Processing of Senate amendments in the Congress

Upon receiving the amended text, the processing in the Congress reopens, but in a strictly reviewing phase. The Congress Rules, within the general legislative procedure framework, establish that:

• Amendments affect the articles or specific parts of the law (articles, additional provisions, final provisions, etc.), each of which is considered as a separate “article” for amendment purposes.
• The text is normally sent to the competent Committee, which studies the Senate’s amendments and issues a report proposing to the Plenary whether they should be accepted or rejected, totally or partially.
• This report then goes to the Congress Plenary, where the amendments are debated and voted on.

4. Majorities and possible scenarios

In this phase, the general rule is a simple majority of the members present, according to the constitutional criterion on the adoption of parliamentary agreements: more votes in favor than against, unless a specific rule requires a qualified majority (which generally does not occur for accepting or rejecting Senate amendments).

From there, several scenarios can occur:

• Total acceptance of the Senate amendments:
  • The Congress votes in favor of all the amendments.
  • The final text of the law becomes the one initially approved by the Congress incorporating all the Senate’s modifications.
• Partial acceptance:
  • The Congress accepts certain amendments and rejects others.
  • Article by article (or block of articles), the Plenary decides whether to incorporate each Senate amendment.
  • The final text results from adding the Congress text plus the specific accepted amendments.
• Total rejection of the amendments:
  • The Congress votes against all the amendments.
  • In this case, the text initially approved by the Congress in first reading prevails entirely.

In all these cases, the key element is that the Senate’s amendments are not incorporated automatically: they require express acceptance by the Congress. The available information emphasizes that if the Congress does not accept the modifications, “the text approved by the Congress in the first instance prevails.”

5. Final approval and sending to the King

Once the Congress Plenary has voted on the Senate amendments, the result is the final text of the law (whether the original Congress text, partially modified, or fully modified by the accepted amendments). From there:

• The Boards of the Chambers order the formation of the final text.
• The President of the Congress sends it to the King for sanction and promulgation.
• The law is published in the Official State Gazette, from which moment it can come into force under the terms provided in its final provision.

In summary, when the Senate introduces amendments, the “second reading” in the Congress is decisive: by simple majority, the Chamber decides whether to adopt those modifications or not, and with that result the ordinary legislative procedure is closed and the text that will reach the Official State Gazette is configured.

In the processing of organic laws in Spain, the Senate acts as a chamber of second reading and review. Its powers are essentially the same as in ordinary laws: to examine the text sent by the Congress, propose amendments, and, if applicable, exercise a suspensive veto. The specialty of organic laws lies in the majorities required in the Congress, but it does not grant the Senate different or enhanced powers.

1. General role of the Senate in the processing of organic laws

Once the Congress of Deputies approves a draft or proposal of an organic law, the text is sent to the Senate for review. From that moment, the Senate can:

• Approve the text as received from the Congress.
• Propose amendments to the articles (partial modifications of the text).
• Exercise the veto, that is, oppose the law as a whole and return it to the Congress.

All this is done through an internal procedure similar to that of the Congress: the text is assigned to a competent committee, which studies the project in detail, examines the amendments proposed by the groups, and prepares a report. That report is then submitted to the Senate Plenary, which debates and votes on the final result of the Upper Chamber.

2. Senate amendments to an organic law

The Senate can present amendments to the text of an organic law. The procedure is as follows:

• The senatorial groups submit amendments to the articles of the project.
• The corresponding committee studies and votes on them, incorporating those approved into its report.
• The Senate Plenary debates the report and the surviving amendments and adopts a final text.

If the Senate introduces modifications, the text returns to the Congress. As the retrieved information states:

• The Congress can accept the amendments; in this case, the law is approved with the modifications introduced by the Senate.
• The Congress can reject totally or partially the amendments. For this, a simple majority (more votes in favor than against) suffices. In that case, the text initially approved by the Congress prevails, that is, the Congress has the final word.

For organic laws, the reinforced majority requirement applies when the Congress approves or confirms the final text; the Senate’s amendment power does not alter this requirement but can nuance or modulate the content if its amendments are accepted.

3. Senate veto and its override by the Congress

The Senate can exercise a veto on the entirety of the organic law sent by the Congress. According to the technical explanation:

• The veto means that the Senate expresses its overall rejection of the project and returns it to the Congress.
• The veto is suspensive, not definitive: in the Spanish system, the final word always corresponds to the Congress of Deputies.

The Congress can overcome that Senate veto in two ways:

• First vote: by absolute majority of the deputies.
• Second vote: if the absolute majority is not reached initially, after a period, the Congress can lift the veto by simple majority (more votes in favor than against).

This also applies to organic laws: the Senate can veto them, but the veto can be lifted by the Congress. What distinguishes organic laws is not a different veto power of the Senate, but the majorities required for their final approval in the Congress.

4. What happens if the Senate does not act or approves without changes

If the Senate approves the text without changes, it is returned to the Congress for the final phase, where compliance with the necessary majorities for an organic law is verified and, if applicable, the norm is ready for promulgation and publication.

If the Senate does not act within the constitutional deadline (does not approve, amend, or veto), it is understood to waive its review power and the initiative continues its course, maintaining the basic design of the Senate as a second reading chamber but without the capacity for definitive blockage.

5. Key idea: Chamber of review, not of final decision

In summary, in the processing of organic laws the Senate:

• Reviews the text approved by the Congress.
• Can propose amendments and formulate a veto.
• Does not have the final word: its amendments can be rejected by simple majority and its veto lifted by majorities of the Congress.

Thus, the Senate acts as a body of political and technical review and nuance of organic laws, but the center of gravity of the decision—including the requirement of reinforced majorities—remains in the Congress of Deputies.

The latest Senate elections in Spain were held simultaneously with the general elections on July 23, 2023 (XV Legislature). Since then, the Senate is composed of some senators directly elected in those elections and others appointed by the regional parliaments following their own elections.

Based on the information available from the consulted sources, several elements about the overall results and the position of the Popular Party (PP) in the Upper Chamber can be clearly established, although no single closed figure of its seats is provided:

General composition of the Senate after the latest elections

An analytical article about the Senate indicates that the Upper Chamber is made up of:

• 208 senators directly elected in the general elections, by universal suffrage in the provincial constituencies.
• An additional block of senators appointed by the regional parliaments, which sources place around the mid-fifties (57 in the most recent article), depending on the results of the regional elections and subsequent political agreements in each autonomous community.

This places the total number of Senate members around 265–266 senators, according to various institutional notes and analyses collected since 2023.

Political results: position of the Popular Party

Although the consulted pieces do not provide a complete numerical table of seat distribution by group after election night, they are very clear on a key point: the Popular Party obtained an absolute majority in the Senate in this legislature.

Various analyses from Demócrata on the functioning of the Upper Chamber and the distribution of committees indicate that:

• The PP holds an absolute majority in the Senate, which has allowed it to control the Senate Board and set the size and distribution of the standing committees.
• In the XV Legislature, the Board with a PP majority decided that the Senate committees would be composed of 32 members, and the analysis of that distribution shows that:
  • The Popular Group has 17 members in each committee.
  • The Socialist Group has 9.
  • The rest is distributed among left-wing, nationalist groups, and the Mixed Group.
  This configuration is consistent with a scenario where the PP is by far the largest group in the Chamber.
• Another piece from Demócrata, focused on institutional clashes between PP and PSOE, also highlights that the current situation is unprecedented because the main opposition party (the PP, in the Congress) simultaneously holds a very comfortable absolute majority in the Senate, something that had not happened stably in the recent democratic period.

How many specific seats does the PP have in the Senate?

Here the consulted sources are more limited. The collected articles and notes offer:

• The total number of Chamber members (208 elected + around 57 regional).
• Concrete examples of how the latest regional results affect the number of senators of each party in different communities (for example, distributions of appointed senators in Catalonia, Andalusia, Extremadura, or Aragon).
• Clear confirmation that the PP has an absolute majority and controls the Board and most key positions.

However, none of the analyzed pieces provide the exact and updated number of Popular Party senators in the Upper Chamber (that is, the precise number of seats of the Popular Group in the entire Senate, adding elected and regional and discounting possible replacements or subsequent resignations).

Given that:

• The number of regional senators of each party can change after each regional election and government pact (as seen with the additional seats obtained by PP and Vox in some regional parliaments), and
• Resignations and replacements of senators also alter the size of each group over time,

the only way to know at any given time the exact number of PP seats is to consult directly the official composition of the Senate published by the Chamber itself on its institutional website, where the list of senators and their parliamentary group affiliation is updated.

In summary: the available sources confirm that in the latest Senate elections (July 23, 2023) the Popular Party became the leading force and obtained an absolute majority in the Chamber, but they do not provide the exact numerical data of how many seats the PP currently holds. For that specific detail, it is necessary to consult the updated composition of the Senate on the Senate website.