The 2023 election cycle may seem far off, but it’s on the front of everyone’s mind in Spain. The center-left coalition government of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and Unidas Podemos will finish its term that year, and, months before, Spain will also hold local elections for municipal and autonomous community governments. The coming electoral season hangs heavy over national politics and influences discussions across the ideological spectrum.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have hit the country hard. Although limited in its scope and dogged by internal tensions, the coalition government responded to the crisis with policies that have mitigated some of its worst effects. A recent example came when the Spanish government lobbied the European Union to grant an “Iberian exception” to energy price hikes.

Yolanda Díaz, the labor minister and second vice president for Unidas Podemos, represents the best of the government’s efforts to provide social protections during hard times. During the pandemic, Díaz’s management of the furlough benefits plan significantly cushioned the effects of economic paralysis for workers and small companies. Díaz’s labor reform bill, which was just approved in February of this year, represents a major — if modest — milestone that would empower labor by decreasing precarity and increasing permanent work contracts, among other things.