Why Spain has no term limits for its prime minister

Spain and Italy, the only EU countries without term limits

Spain has no term limits because the 1978 Constitution never set one: the prime minister can run for office as many times as he wants, and no later law has imposed a cap. It's a rarity by European standards. Alongside Italy, Spain would be the only EU member without such a restriction written into its legal system. What's extraordinary isn't the rule itself. It's the silence surrounding it.

The resignation argument: it doesn't matter who governs

The most influential line of reasoning isn't about rights or checks and balances, but about outcomes. The argument holds that the underlying economic agenda — unaffordable housing, regulatory red tape for entrepreneurs, an undiversified productive structure, a slow justice system, external dependence — survives intact no matter who moves into La Moncloa, the prime minister's official residence. With Feijóo or with Abascal, the script would stay the same, so debating how long the current occupant can stay would be a waste of time.

There's a more uncomfortable variant of this thesis: the system would be designed as a bipartisan machine where the dominant party plays the role of Mexico's PRI, with a planned rotation and a continuity agenda. If the turn is already guaranteed, term limits are redundant.

Long tenure or authoritarian drift: theory versus examples

There is a defensible case, and it shouldn't be caricatured: a prolonged mandate allows for projects that don't fit into four years. That's the argument made in its favor. The problem is that the list of real-world examples speaks for itself. Venezuela, Russia, Germany in the 1930s. Indefinite tenure is rarely justified by precedent; it's justified by theory.

That's exactly where the analysis gets stuck. No one can pinpoint the moment when Spain decided not to impose a limit, because such a moment never existed: it simply was never put in place. And with all this in mind, the interesting question is no longer why there's no limit, but why nobody is in a hurry to set one.