Spain's Podemos proposes retirement at 60 and a 35-hour week

Retirement at 60, 35 hours and a maximum wage: Podemos' prescription

Four measures and one underlying promise. Podemos' economic programme, circulating ahead of the upcoming Spanish elections, rests on a recognisable axis: distributing work and wealth before the market does it on its own. The flagship proposal is retirement at 60 and a 35-hour working week, presented as "mechanisms to redistribute work and wealth equitably, promoting work-life balance".

The package does not stop there. It includes a ban on layoffs at profitable companies, the repeal of the 2010 and 2012 labour reforms and the 2014 royal decree, and the elimination of temporary staffing agencies. On top of that, a significant increase in the minimum wage and a maximum salary proportionally linked to the minimum wage.

What Podemos proposes on public debt

On debt, the party backs a "citizen audit of public and private debt to determine which parts of it can be considered illegitimate", with measures against those responsible and a declaration of default on those parts. For the rest, restructuring. And on the institutional front, repeal of Article 135 of the Constitution, a European public rating agency and the inclusion of employment as a priority in the ECB's mandate.

The sceptical reading is immediate: if pension spending is already eating up a growing share of the budget, bringing retirement forward by five years strains the coffers even further. Some put it bluntly: it amounts to driving the state into bankruptcy within its own term of office. The defence is different: without demand there is no activity, and redistributing working time is the only lever left when credit dries up.

The 5 proposals for 29N and the jump to a €1,800 minimum wage

The most recent material hits the accelerator. A message attributed to Pablo Fernández sums up five points: housing to live in, lowering the cost of living, not a single euro for wars, a €1,800 minimum wage with a 30-hour week, and protecting the public sector with climate policies. The working week drops from 35 to 30 hours. The minimum wage rises to a specific figure.

Irony hangs over the matter: some point out that they had ten years in government, including the deputy prime minister's office, and now, apparently, is the right time. The most repeated criticism does not dispute the diagnosis but the arithmetic. Raising the minimum wage and cutting hours without touching productivity is, for part of the analysis, a way of accelerating the very outcome it claims to avoid: the collapse of the pension system, only sooner and all at once.

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One detail remains that unsettles. A programme promising 30 hours, retirement at 60 and a maximum wage always faces the same examiner: the budget. And the budget, unlike the narrative, does not negotiate.