MADRID: Members of the Spanish hard-left party Podemos ("We Can") began voting on October 22, 2024, whether to make its crucial support for this year's budget conditional on the government severing ties with Israel and implementing measures to curb rent prices by 40 per cent.
The Socialist-led government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, which relies on a fragile coalition of smaller parties to approve any legislation, needs the votes of the four Podemos lawmakers in the lower house for the budget to pass. Sanchez faces a delicate balancing act as he also requires support from two centre-right parties—Catalan separatists Junts and Basque regionalists PNV—who are set to impose their own conditions to back the budget.
On October 21, 2024, Podemos Secretary-General Ione Belarra—who served as Sanchez's social rights minister between 2021 and 2023 but is no longer in the ruling coalition—criticised what she described as the government's inaction in a video message. — Reuters
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