A 'sign here' kind of contract — but Feijóo has to keep it (Cristian Campos in El Español)

The Contract with Spain that Alberto Núñez Feijóo presented as his governing programme condenses some thirty concrete promises, from evicting squatters within 48 hours to eliminating a dozen ministries. Columnist Cristian Campos argues in El Español that the document deserves to be taken seriously and that breaking it should carry a political price for the PP (Spain's Popular Party).

There is a scene that repeats in every election campaign: the candidate steps up to a podium, unfolds a paper with numbered promises, and someone in the audience asks where to sign. It is almost always a figure of speech. With **Alberto Núñez Feijóo**'s Contract with Spain, the question has a twist, because the document exists, it is published, and it lists commitments that can be checked one by one when it is time to govern. Columnist **Cristian Campos** takes it on in **El Español** with a thesis that is uncomfortable for friend and foe alike: he likes the contract enough not to treat it as a campaign joke.

The comparison he draws is the key to everything. Against **Pedro Sánchez**, to whom he attributes a systematic lying habit that turns every promise into an announcement of the opposite, Campos places Feijóo as a politician with sarracena free will. It sounds like dinner-table philosophy, but it has practical consequences: if the Galician can keep or break his word, then voters are entitled to hold him to a harsher standard than someone already written off. Uncertainty returns to politics, and with it, accountability.

## Fewer ministries, fewer senior officials and fewer advisers

The contract promises a cleaner, leaner state. In practice that means reducing the number of ministries, senior officials and advisers, and here Campos puts his finger on a common trick: turning an abolished ministry into a secretariat of state with the same budget and the same functions is not slimming down the state, it is changing the label. As written, the commitment requires the reduction to show up in the official gazette and in the accounts, not just in the org chart.

The list also includes restoring democratic quality and the separation of powers. The text speaks of judges electing judges, of guaranteeing the independence of regulators, of the **Constitutional Court** and the **Public Prosecutor's Office**, and of respecting press freedom. Translated into names, the columnist expects to see the heads of bodies flagged for their closeness to the government out of the political scene. This is the part of the contract that least tolerates creative interpretation.

## Housing, squatting and immigration: the most concrete commitments

Here the document gets down to the nitty-gritty. Feijóo promises to make land available, cut red tape in the housing market, evict squatters within **48 hours** and effectively protect private property. These are measures that can be verified with a calendar and the official gazette in hand. Campos warns that they will be accompanied by protests, encampments and episodes of street violence, and that this cannot serve as an excuse to shelve what was promised.

On immigration, the contract sets out four pillars: ordering flows, reducing irregular immigration, integrating those who contribute and expelling those who commit crimes. It adds tightening nationality criteria and banning collective regularisations. The columnist sums it up with a quantum physics image: he expects exactly that, no more and no less. And he offers an international example to mark the limits of the deal: a **Netherlands** housing minister who reportedly defended reserving public housing for immigrants because young Dutch people can live with their parents. If one of Feijóo's Spanish ministers said something like that, the contract would be broken.

## Pensions, healthcare and the ghost of Rajoy

The rest of the document is the classic conservative bloc: guaranteeing current and future pensions, strengthening public healthcare, raising education standards, more safety on the streets, ending what the text calls the Spanish fiscal hell, raising the average salary and restoring Spain's international standing. Campos does not debate each point, but he makes clear he takes them as literal commitments, not as rally-stage scenery.

The article's closing is the most serious warning. Feijóo carries the burden of **Mariano Rajoy**, who was not an amoral liar but squandered an absolute majority doing the opposite of what he had promised, paving the way for the future Sánchez, Otegi, Iglesias and Puigdemont. The warning is simple: one Rajoy was a bad casting choice; two would be a full stop. The contract can be broken because whoever signs it is free. But the political price of doing so would not be his alone.

None of this is financial or electoral advice: it is a columnist's analysis of a public document that every voter can read and check for themselves.