Was Lyndon B. Johnson The one that, applying as the best alternative in the primary of the American Democratic Party, said there were two types of horses: the contest and the work. The contest were pleasant in view, he said, but when it comes to work you can not count on them. He claimed to be a work horse, of course, and the contest was his rival in those primaries, one John F. Kennedy. Although it has been a long time since then, this metaphor serves perfectly to explain current Spanish policy.
What kind of horse would it be Pedro Sánchez? If the government is asked, in Moncloa they will say that it is a work horse. Definitely. But nothing is further from reality. So far from the legislature, the Congress of Deputies has approved ten laws and nine organic laws. It’s about A total of 19 laws from the 23J 2023 elections.
This means that the lower house approves One law every 37.4 days. And it is a worrying fact, since it is the lowest ratio of all democracy.
The reason has made an analysis of all the initiatives that have been approved in Congress from the Constituent Legislature, which began on July 13, 1977, to elucidate what the current one progresses, the XV Legislature. The result is overwhelming. In Spanish democratic history, only laws have been approved at the worst pace in failed legislatures. These are the XI and the XIII, those of the electoral repetitions of 2016 and 2019.
These data completely kill the argumentary of Moncloa and the PSOE. Last week, after the full broom of July 22, the Government was striving to disseminate a message in which he presumed to have approved “42 laws in the BOE so far from the legislature.” With that message they intended to combat the story that they are a fragile government; However, it is a deceptive statement, pure misinformation.
In its accounts, the government is not referring only to bills or law propositions that are processed in Congress, but is also taking into account the real decrees or the real legislative decrees that the Government leads to the BOE on its own. Even so, he continues to fail: according to the website of the Congress of Deputies, This legislature has approved 41 laws, organic laws, real decrees or real legislative decrees. No 42.
Moncloa’s deception
It also shows the misleading of the data that Moncloa facilitates that, in its account of laws taken to the BOE. The Government is including Royal Decree-Law 7/2025, of June 24, which approves urgent measures for the reinforcement of the electrical system. This is the so-called Royal Decree Anti-Pagones, which appears on the Congress website, but was repealed on July 22. The Council of Ministers had approved it a month ago, but it could not be validated by the votes against the PP, Vox, Podemos, Junts, BNG and a deputy of adding. It is true that he arrived at Boe, as the government says, but the truth is that he did not stay in him.
The reasons for the legislative power to be legislating since 2023 are more than evident. The elections drawn an absolutely fragmented congress and although Pedro Sánchez won the support to be invested, he is not getting them to govern. Above all, because it was sustained on partners that often have cross interests. The measures that nationalist, Junts and PNV parties want, do not usually coincide with those of ERC and Bildu, their territorial competitors.
In the same way, we can and add battle for the same electorate nationwide. And bridges with the PP are broken for state consensus and with Vox or negotiate. Thus, each law is a bobbin lace by which the government sweats blood and that shows in the low number of initiatives approved. Sánchez, however, does not see in this situation a reason to call elections and prefers to govern “with or without the legislative contest,” as he said in the penultimate Federal PSOE Committee.
Another of the arguments to which Moncloa usually appears to excuse its difficulty when approved measures is that the time of bipartisanship and absolute majorities have already ended. It is true that it is practically impossible to imagine a scenario in which a party can have an absolute majority again. It is also true that since the end of bipartisanship, which could be placed in the XI legislature, when Can and Citizens They entered for the first time in the Congress of Deputies, the number of laws approved has fallen.
But this does not justify that parliamentary productivity falls so much, and Pedro Sánchez himself is an example of this. In the previous legislature, Sánchez managed to carry out 118 laws. It is a ratio of one every 11.5 days. It is a figure very similar to the laws that were approved in the III Legislature, with Felipe González as president. Then there were 120 laws, one per 10.2 days.
Another way to analyze productivity is for years, but there does not stop the government either. The worst years, discarding those in which elections were held, were 2017, when he still governed Mariano Rajoyand 2024. In both years, a total of 13 laws were approved in each. So far this year, only six, less than half have been approved in 2025. This means that this year is also the way to be the worst of democracy, because now Sanchez has less with the support of his partners than in January, and it is difficult to think that he will be able to overcome.