Spain budget bill passes first Parliament vote with broad support

The lower house of the Spanish Parliament (Congreso de los Diputados) rejected on Thursday by a large majority the amendments to the whole budget bill for 2022 filed by opposition parties. In this way, the public accounts easily passed their first examination and can continue their parliamentary processing.

Parliament overturned the counter-opinions filed by the opposition groups PP, Vox, Ciudadanos and Junts Per Catalunya. To overcome this process, the coalition government formed by PSOE (Social Democrat) and Unidas Podemos (Left) had the support of its main partners, including some Catalan (ERC) and Basque (PNV, Bildu) nationalist groups.

The vote took place after noon and ended with a majority of votes rejecting the amendments (188) compared to 156 votes in favor of the counter-opinions and one abstention by mistake.

The minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, thanked the groups that have supported the bill. She offered dialogue to the other parties to improve it during the process that is now opening in the Parliament's Budget Committee.

The deadline for submitting partial amendments ends on Friday 5 November.

Processing schedule

Subsequently, the deadline for preparing the Committee's proposal is 19 November. The document will then be debated by the plenary session of the Budget Committee during the week of 22 November.

Once approved in the lower house, the bill will begin its way in the Senate (Senado) or upper house.

The objective of the Government is to ensure that the budget complete their parliamentary processing in time to be in force on 1 January 2022.