Overview

• The Constitution requires the draft General State Budgets to be filed at least three months before year‑end, yet the government did not even send the stability targets or spending ceiling to Congress.
• Finance Minister María Jesús Montero avoided explaining the delay in the Senate and no longer repeated the earlier pledge to present a 2026 budget draft.
• The Partido Popular intensified criticism, with Senate spokesperson Alicia García saying the executive lacks support even to pretend to present the accounts, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo highlighting that prior‑legislature budgets remain in force.
• Podemos, Junts and ERC have withheld support unless demands are met, including no rise in defence spending, a break in relations with Israel, and major fiscal concessions for Catalonia.
• Reporting indicates the government may test a procedural path by sending a spending ceiling and later withdrawing a full budget to avert a formal defeat that could open an early‑election scenario.