What the Constitution does not say

On the official website we read the following: “The Council of Ministers approved an agreement which establishes the criteria for applying the extension for 2026 of the general state budgets in force in 2025. The measure is in accordance with the … Article 134 of the Spanish Constitution, which states that, if on January 1 there is no new budget law, the public accounts of the previous year will automatically be considered extended.

Well, this agreement from the Council of Ministers is wrong. Article 134 of the Constitution does not specify that if, on January 1, there is “no” new budgetary law, the accounts will automatically be considered as extended. Article 134 of the Constitution says no such thing. Furthermore: Article 134 of the Constitution does not even provide for the month of January; Article 134 does not speak of “public accounts”; and article 134 does not consider, in any passage, the hypothesis according to which “there exists” a new budgetary law.

Article 134 of the 1978 Constitution envisages the case where the budget law “is not approved”, a mandate which obviously implies a vote in the Congress of Deputies. Everyone knows that this vote, to “approve” or “not approve” the General State Budgets, was refused to the 350 deputies. I think the Council of Ministers must correct this error.

Jose Luis Gardon. Madrid

The king and the nation

There is an aspect of the King’s message that has gone unnoticed and that I consider essential to understanding the gravity of our times: Don Felipe was not addressing the nation, but rather a few politicians that he could have brought together in any other circumstance. Such is the scale of the crisis we are going through, to the point of sacrificing the nature of what has always been a Christmas message.

Carmen Bailon. Jaén