Spain calls elections for 29 November: early retirement and fuel-price indexing put on hold

Royal Decree 806/2026, of 5 October, published today in the BOE, dissolves Spain’s Congress of Deputies and Senate and calls general elections for Sunday, 29 November 2026. The campaign runs from 13 to 27 November; the new chambers’ constitutive session is set for 23 December — and forming a government, historically, still takes several weeks beyond that.

Until then, Pedro Sánchez’s executive becomes a caretaker government: it can manage day-to-day affairs, but loses the political room to pass substantive decree-laws or new legislation without exceptional justified urgency. For anyone driving heavy vehicles through Spain — the main transit route between Portugal and the rest of Europe — that freezes, at least until well into 2027, three files the sector had on the table.

Early retirement for drivers

Spanish employer associations and unions (including Fenadismer, UGT and CCOO) signed a formal request to Social Security a year ago to create reduction coefficients allowing professional drivers, both salaried and self-employed, to retire before the legal age — similar to what already exists for miners or firefighters. The technical accident and morbidity report backing the request is finished, but the final decision depends on a government with the authority to sign it off. With the Cortes dissolved, the process goes nowhere until a new executive is in place.

Fuel-price indexing

The sector has for months been asking for a mechanism that automatically links the professional diesel aid to fuel-price movements, instead of successive one-off decrees like RDL 25/2026 (the current aid, which steps up from 5 to 19 cents between October and December). Any new mechanism would require the kind of decree-law a caretaker government normally avoids.

Módulos (simplified tax regime)

The estimación objetiva regime (“módulos”), used by many self-employed hauliers to calculate personal income tax, is usually extended by ministerial order at the end of each year for the next. With the political calendar taken up by the campaign and government formation, the sector fears the 2027 extension could arrive later than usual, or on less favourable terms.

None of these three files has been cancelled — they are on hold, not dead. But anyone planning next year’s activity in Spain, or negotiating with Spanish hauliers, should factor in at least two to three months of extra uncertainty before any decision.