The right's proposed new government: 15 ministries instead of 23

Fifteen ministries, Abascal at Defence and a Ministry of Immigration: the blueprint that's going around

A poster with fifteen portfolios and one promise: slim down the government. The cabinet proposal that has gone viral in recent days calls for going from **23 ministries to 15**, with names and surnames divided between the PP and VOX. The fine print matters more than the headline: there is a ministry of **Immigration, Remigration and Repatriation**, another for Borders, and Santiago Abascal appears at the head of Defence. The document is not an electoral programme. It is an exercise in political imagination that has served to argue about the same old thing: how much state is surplus and how much of the cutting is propaganda.

The first sticking point is arithmetic. The poster speaks of fifteen portfolios; the actual count by those who have gone through it one by one comes to **fourteen**. And the cut, compared with the current executive, amounts to eight fewer. The round figure in the headline deflates when you count it. That is the level of rigour with which everything that trinc should be read.

How many ministries does Spain have, and how many would remain after the cut?

The proposal starts from a shared diagnosis: there are too many ministries and too many overlapping responsibilities. The most repeated criticism is that of the **chiringuitos** —the term is used without embarrassment— and of departments that overlap with others. The model cited as a reference is Javier Milei's in Argentina, which went from **24 portfolios to 8**, according to the figures used by those defending the axe. The argument is simple: the country does not sink for having fewer ministers.

The comparison is not gratuitous. It serves to set the floor of what is considered acceptable: if Argentina can run on eight, Spain should manage with eleven or twelve at most. The split considered acceptable, according to the polls, would be **seven portfolios for the PP and four for VOX**. Anything else, the argument goes, is staying on the same path of waste.

There is one detail that unsettles the most enthusiastic: the list includes portfolios that do not exist today under that name. **Immigration, Remigration and Repatriation** is a statement of intent more than an administrative structure. And the Ministry of Borders, in a country whose hottest border is an airport, opens a can of worms nobody has closed.

Abascal at Defence and the problem of profiles

The allocation of names is what generates the most noise. Santiago Abascal appearing at Defence is read as an internal signal: hard-line profiles, a right without complexes, a message of firmness. The ironic reading also exists: the same poster that promises an iron fist places at the head of the Armed Forces someone with no known management experience in the field. Politics as a casting call.

The rest of the cabinet is filled out with names that have not leaked in the proposal, and with an absence that stands out: the ministries of Equality and Democratic Memory do not appear. Their disappearance is, for some, proof that the cut is about ideology and not efficiency. For others, that is exactly the point: there are portfolios that exist only to justify a narrative.

The discussion about profiles soon descends into the usual noise. Some see in the blueprint a **house of pavor** government, while others, from the opposite side, warn that the PSOE is never dead: the patronage network is enormous and people remember that their father's pension went up thirty euros. Spanish politics is played out in that margin.

The debate that really matters: immigration and borders

The Ministry of Immigration is the one that generates the most ink. The discussion splits in two. One camp holds that tightening controls at airports and limiting access to benefits like the **IMV** (Spain's minimum income scheme) would reduce irregular arrivals in the first month of government. Another warns that the employers' association is lobbying in the opposite direction: **700,000 foreign workers** are being requested to build housing, and that is signed off by both the PP and VOX. The contradiction, if it exists, is on paper.

The issue gets mixed up with the European Union's migration policy, with repatriations as a recurring promise and with the suspicion that the hard-line rhetoric stays on T-shirts and stadium stands. The distrust is universal: people doubt the one who promises an iron fist and doubt the one who promises regularisation.

The electoral forecast: neither winning nor losing is written

The predictions circulating in the conversation give no clear winner. One possible scenario: **PSOE 130, PP 115, VOX 40, FA 40**. Another: the right falls short and Feijóo needs the PSOE's abstention, a possibility described as interesting and by no means far-fetched. And a third path, the one with most consensus among sceptics: the PSOE improves its results and governs through parliamentary tricks.

The figure that unsettles everyone is turnout and the seat count. With fifteen ministries or twenty-three, the problem is not the organigram. It is that **the right does not win unless it adds up**, and the sums do not work out. The experience of Ciudadanos and UPyD hangs over every forecast: those who promise and fail to deliver disappear.

---

The underlying question remains, the one nobody fully answers: is cutting ministries an economic policy or a gesture? With the numbers in hand, going from 23 to 15 saves less than the noise suggests. What really changes a government is not how many portfolios it has, but what it does with the ones that remain. And that, in the poster, was not included.