Spain’s Congress approved a Partido Popular (PP) motion on 25 June 2026 urging Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to consider a confidence vote and resign over corruption cases involving political figures the motion described as directly appointed or supported by him. The PP, Vox and Junts backed the initiative, as did Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN), adding to parliamentary pressure on Sánchez. Coalición Canaria supported some points.
The motion was considered point by point during the final ordinary plenary session of the legislative period. One reported tally was 178 votes in favour and 171 against; the two basic points received 178 and 177 votes in favour, respectively, with 171 opposing votes on each. The text urged Sánchez to “consider the chance to put a confidence vote” and assume political responsibility by resigning. Coalición Canaria’s deputy abstained on the resignation-related point.
Junts, led by Carles Puigdemont, was basic to the result, but its support for this motion did not amount to a formal alliance with the PP or Vox. The party has assessed parliamentary measures individually, at times backing government decrees while supporting initiatives directed against Sánchez. Junts has called for Sánchez to leave office and for the PSOE to nominate a replacement, either from within the party or outside it. In the final vote, Junts’s seven seats helped secure the motion’s passage.
Submitted under the title “on the unsustainable situation of the Government of Spain,” the motion’s final wording was narrower than the PP’s original proposal. The Congressional Board rejected amendments from both the PP and Junts that would have added the possibility of early elections. Instead, the adopted text urged a confidence vote and resignation, reflecting the constitutional allocation of election-calling powers to the president of the Government. Because this was a parliamentary motion, not a binding investiture or censure procedure, it did not compel Sánchez to seek confidence or resign. Nor did it require him to call an election.
The motion’s immediate effect was political, not constitutional: it registered a majority in favour of urging Sánchez to reconsider his position while leaving the Government in office. Government minister Félix Bolaños was reported as dismissing the motion as having “zero political effect.” Still, the vote intensified parliamentary confrontation amid corruption investigations affecting people in Sánchez’s political surroundings.
The motion also unfolded against a weakened parliamentary backdrop. Junts had withdrawn reliable support by October 2025, leaving the Government without a stable majority and contributing to its inability to pass a new budget; Spain continued operating under an extended version of its 2023 budget. That made Junts’s support for the PP motion politically impressive, even though the vote did not change the Government’s legal status or trigger an election.
Spain’s parliamentary system distinguishes a political motion from procedures that can directly determine whether a government remains in office. The June initiative called on Sánchez to act but did not itself initiate a confidence vote or remove him. Its significance lay in the parties that backed it and the pressure it placed on a government reliant on future parliamentary negotiations to secure support for legislation.
