Sánchez pledges to enshrine pension indexation in Spain's Constitution before 29 November vote

The pledge

Pedro Sánchez, the PSOE candidate seeking re-election, made the promise at a pre-campaign rally in Gijón, in the Asturias region, on Monday, 26 October. Reports put the crowd at about 6,000 people, including many who could not get inside the venue. He said that if he keeps governing after the general election on 29 November, the next legislature will reform the Constitution so that pensions and their annual increases are tied to the consumer price index (IPC). He presented the move as a response to what he called the threat from the PP and Vox, accusing both parties of wanting to privatise and cut retirement benefits.

Sánchez framed the idea as the next step in a record he says he built on pensions. He recalled pensioner protests during the financial crisis of the last decade and said his government restored annual pension rises linked to the cost of living, undoing the 'counter-reform' carried out under Mariano Rajoy of the PP. He told the crowd that his parents had earned their pensions through effort, and that the 29 November vote would decide whether pensions keep rising in line with the IPC.

“In the next legislature, we will reform the Constitution to protect pensions and their indexation to the CPI.”

The Senate pact and the attack on Feijóo

Sánchez attacked the deal the PP and Vox struck on the same day to field joint candidates for the Senate in several provinces. Vox will not stand its own candidates in six provinces: Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Cádiz, Valencia, Castellón and Baleares. In those provinces the PP lists will carry an independent candidate proposed by Vox in second or third place, according to the PP. The PP will not stand in Guipúzcoa, Tarragona or Girona, where it has never won a Senate seat in the case of the last two, and has been without one in Guipúzcoa for 26 years.

Sánchez said the pact left no doubt about the choice facing voters, and that the PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo was effectively backing Santiago Abascal of Vox.

“Voting for Feijóo is voting for Abascal.”

He also contrasted Spain with Germany and other large European countries, where, he argued, conservatives keep their distance from the far right. He said the PP's pact with Vox had set the country's democratic right back 50 years.

The arithmetic of a constitutional change

The proposal is hard to deliver on the numbers. An ordinary constitutional reform needs the backing of three-fifths of the Congress of Deputies, which is 210 seats, so it would require an understanding between the two largest parties in the chamber. Sánchez, for his part, asked voters for an absolute majority of 176 seats for the PSOE so it could reach social advances faster and further.

Three-fifths of Congress needed for constitutional reform210

Absolute majority sought by PSOE176

Three-fifths of Congress needed for constitutional reform

210 seats

Absolute majority sought by PSOE

176 seats

Data from the article text

The pledge continues a resolution approved at the PSOE's last federal congress, which aimed to write 'the guarantee of purchasing power and the sustainability of the pension system' into the constitutional text. It also follows an initiative in Granada to protect the right to abortion in the Constitution, which Sánchez has backed. Sánchez's campaign also stresses the outcome of the 29 November vote, which he framed as the decisive test for the pension rules.

Campaign framing ahead of 29 November

Sánchez closed by urging supporters to trust him to govern Spain for four more years. He drew a parallel with Brazil, saying that hours earlier Lula da Silva had won the runoff there and that if Brazil could manage it, Spain could too. He also cast the campaign as a contest between cohesion and inequality, and between love and hate.

“These elections are about cohesion against inequality and love against hate.”

The rally was attended by the Asturias regional president Adrián Barbón, the PSOE list head in the region Adriana Lastra, and the Gijón mayoral candidate Lara Martínez. The general election is set for 29 November, and the constitutional pledge would only be tested if Sánchez keeps governing after that date.