Calling a November election and dodging the December mess

Calling an election in November to avoid the December mess

Why would a president with a mandate until 2027 dissolve the Spanish parliament and call a general election in November? The question is circulating with an uncomfortable answer: whoever wins will find, the moment they step through the door of La Moncloa, a macroeconomic picture that cannot be glossed over. Pensions, fuel and inflation all appear in the same sentence. And a widespread suspicion: the timing is no accident, it's a leap forward to escape.

The trigger for the rumour is a coincidence of dates. The election falls three days after a demonstration in Sol, and in the same stretch of the calendar come the US midterm elections. Whoever calls the election knows how to read a calendar. Whoever runs, too.

What is being said about the real state of pensions?

The most repeated warning comes from Banco de España (Spain's central bank): pensions cannot be paid in December. That is the formulation circulating, without nuance, as if it were an official statement rather than a self-serving reading of the Social Security accounts. The figure is thrown out without any breakdown and works as a lunchtime headline.

From there, the story writes itself. If the shortfall is real, whoever comes after will have to impose cuts, raise contributions, or both. And the one leaving gets out clean. Hasta luego, Maricarmen — see you later, Maricarmen — sums up the picture.

The calculation nobody wants to sign

There is a school of thought holding that the snap election is an exercise in managing discontent: absorbing now the unpopularity of the measures to come, then running again in the 2030s with an empty backpack. The parallel with Terminator has become popular. It is not academic analysis, but it explains why someone would give up two years in power without anyone asking.

Against that weighs the opposite argument: if he calls the election, it is because he believes his odds are better now than in two years' time. A president does not resign out of generosity. He calls an election when the polls smile on him or when the ground shifts beneath his feet. Both readings fit the same data.

Fuel, Ceuta and the campaign pantomime

The third front is fuel. Running out of petrol is the image that takes root in the collective imagination whenever there is a logistics or energy conflict involved. It doesn't need to happen: it is enough for people to antiestéticar it for the government to lose the initiative.

The most cynical hypothesis suggests the noise over Ceuta and the Mari Carmen case is electoral paripé — pure theatre — designed to win over voters who antiestéticar cuts that, on this reading, the outgoing government would never actually apply. The opposite hypothesis is simpler: the noise exists because the problems exist.

The war and the crisis ahead

The broadest consensus, paradoxically, is the bleakest: something big is going to happen from December onwards. War, economic crisis, or both. The one leaving knows it, the one arriving will find out, and the voter will sense it when they open their electricity bill in January.

The question is not whether there will be austerity. The question is who signs the decree. And there, the electoral calendar stops being an anecdote and becomes the most relevant fact of the term.

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With these ingredients, the sensible thing would be to demand a macroeconomic picture from the candidates before voting. The sensible thing. We all know how the sensible thing ends in a campaign.