Bravo's guarantee on pensions

On Thursday, 15 October, Juan Bravo, the PP's vice-secretary for finance, housing and infrastructure, said pensions were "innegociables" and that Alberto Núñez Feijóo would not cut them if he reached La Moncloa. He said pensioners should stay calm and that pensions would keep being revalued in line with the consumer price index (IPC). The same day he had said the system was viable if the economy was "adecuada", a remark that set off the row inside the party. In a television interview he accused the PSOE and the government of spreading a "manipulated" cut of his comments, naming minister Óscar Puente. He said he had repeated six times that pensions would track the IPC.

“Pensions will not be cut. Social security contributions will not be raised for workers.”

A disputed record on indexation

Bravo also said that the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was the only one to have frozen pensions, and that it introduced a minimum increase so they could never be frozen again, even if the CPI turned negative. He argued that the PP had voted in favour of the decrees bringing pensions into line with the CPI. Other reporting disputed that account, saying the PP had opposed CPI indexation in 2021 and had voted against some of those decrees. In a separate interview Bravo summed up the matter as settled: pensions are public, they will be guaranteed, and they will rise with the CPI.

Vox, Muñoz and Feijóo

The row started with Vox. José María Figaredo, secretary-general of the Vox parliamentary group, called for a new pension system, and a La Vanguardia column said he had argued for "privatizar" pensions. Santiago Abascal publicly denied that position. Then Ester Muñoz, the PP spokesperson and head of its campaign committee, said in a podcast, before the election was called, that the system was headed for trouble.

“The system is going to collapse.”

Feijóo rejected cuts at a press conference in Brussels held after the PP's European summit, the last before the election. He said pensions would be updated in line with the CPI and that he would guarantee the viability of the public system.

Government response and the 29 November vote

Pedro Sánchez, speaking in Brussels before the last European Council ahead of the election, told pensioners to stay calm. He said a decree revaluing pensions in line with the CPI would be approved before the end of the year, even with the government in a caretaker role. The CPI figure that sets the increase will only be known two days before the 29 November vote. Carlos Cuerpo, first vice-president and minister of economy, told TVE that the update would be made whether the decree passed before or after the vote, so the increase would appear in January payrolls.

“The update is going to be made.”

Sánchez called the early general election for 29 November while leading a caretaker government. The Centre for Sociological Research (CIS) published an advance of its October 2026 barometer, study 3852, which projected that the PSOE would be 11.8 points ahead of the PP if voting took place now. Before the pension row, the pre-campaign had focused on housing and the crisis in Ceuta. One opinion column put Spain's pensioners at 9.5 million and people under 18 at 7.8 million, noting that almost all pensioners can vote while none of the under-18s can.