Five-column exercise: Democracia 21's ten institutional problems, tested one by one

Yesterday we set out the five-column test and ran three of Miriam González's proposals through it: advisers, oversight bodies and MPs in their constituencies. Today we fill in the sheet for the rest of the ten problems she raised at the launch of Democracia 21 in Madrid on 10 October. The columns stay the same:

Goal | Who decides? | Who implements? | Who can veto? | How do we know it worked?

So does the rule from day 13. The column you can't fill marks the spot where the policy will break, and the fix usually belongs in that same column. We analyse Democracia 21 the way we would any party.

The sheet

Infobae's report of the speech listed a judicial council freed from parties and from judges' associations, a prosecution service that answers to Parliament instead of the prime minister, specialised corruption courts, the end of aforamientos, smaller subsidies for parties and their foundations, and a maximum of two terms for every public office.

Problem	Goal	Who decides?	Who implements?	Who can veto?	How do we know?
1. Young people distrust parties	More young people voting, joining and trusting institutions	Congress (electoral law) and each party (its own rules)	Parties, schools, electoral administration	Parties comfortable with low youth turnout	Turnout and trust by age group, published every year
2. Two iron blocs	Laws and budgets passed with votes from both sides	Congress, through its standing orders; voters	Parliamentary groups	Either bloc	Share of laws passed across the blocs; budgets on time
5a. Depoliticised judicial council	A council renewed on time and trusted by judges	The Cortes, by organic law	Judges' elections and the Cortes	Either bloc, through the three-fifths majority	Renewals on time; the EU Rule of Law report
5b. Prosecutor answerable to Parliament	An Attorney General who reports to Congress	Constitutional reform	Congress and the prosecution service	Any bloc able to block a reform	Regular hearings held; cases opened without political pressure
6. Corruption courts, no aforamientos	Faster corruption trials, the same courts for everyone	The Cortes; a constitutional reform for aforamientos	Ministry of Justice, judicial council, regions with justice powers	Reform majorities; regional statutes	Average length of corruption cases
7. Less money for parties and foundations	Leaner party machinery, clean books	The Cortes, through party funding law	Tribunal de Cuentas	The parties voting on their own funding	Audits published on time; every foundation files
8. Two-term limit	Rotation and fewer entrenched networks	The Cortes and regional parliaments	Electoral boards	Incumbents	Spending and competition before and after the limit
10. Clientelism	Jobs, contracts and grants allocated impartially	Government and Cortes (civil service and procurement law)	Every administration	Networks inside every party	Quality-of-government surveys; single-bid contracts

Where the sheet goes red

Four rows stall in the same place. The Constitution sets the rules for the judicial council in article 122: of its twenty members, eight are proposed by Congress and the Senate by a three-fifths majority, and twelve come from among judges under the terms of an organic law. Article 124 says the Attorney General is appointed by the King on the Government's proposal. Article 71 sends criminal cases against deputies and senators to the Supreme Court, and article 102 does the same for members of the Government. Each change needs a large majority, and either bloc can withhold it. Catalan News recorded what that means: the council's terms expired in December 2018 and the renewal came in June 2024, with the European Commission mediating.

Marc Dunkelman and Francis Fukuyama both call this vetocracy, and we have written about it here. The answer in the veto column is a deadline and a default. If Parliament hasn't renewed a body within three months of the term ending, a pre-agreed mechanism fills it, for example the top candidates from an independent shortlist. The 2024 deal already took a step towards this: it barred anyone who held political office in the previous five years from the council, and ministers and secretaries of state from becoming Attorney General. A clock is the missing piece.

Problem 2, the two blocs, looks the same. A rule that rewards agreement still needs both blocs to vote for it. Our grand bargain for institutions proposes negotiating these reforms as a package, so each side gains something.

Two rows stall on the last column. The speech names the problem of young people who loathe parties and the clientelism that slows growth, and neither comes with a measure. Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty gives the first one its indicator. Exit and voice are the two ways people respond when an organisation declines, so you track both by age: exit as abstention and emigration, voice as membership, petitions and votes in primaries. For clientelism, the European Quality of Government Index already asks citizens, region by region, whether public services are allocated impartially, and procurement records show the share of contracts that attract a single bid. Our clientelism explainer goes into the mechanism.

Where the sheet fills up

Two rows fill all five columns. Party funding has a working auditor. The Tribunal de Cuentas reported in September 2026 that the 37 foundations and entities linked to parties received €4.7 million in private donations and €2.1 million in public subsidies in 2023. Four didn't file accounts, and the Court recommended mandatory external audit above an income threshold. Any cut to subsidies can be measured against that baseline.

Term limits have evidence from next door. Portugal capped local executive presidents at three consecutive terms with Law 46/2005. A study for the Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos found that mayors who could not stand again spent and raised less per inhabitant, mostly through lower investment, and managed their budgets in a less electioneering way in election years.

Our proposal

The left brings the demand that public power and public money, including what parties receive, answer to citizens through audits and published results. The right and the liberal market tradition bring the case for fewer political jobs, less public money for party machinery and posts won on merit. The idea neither camp owns comes from filling in the sheet: each reform law carries its own veto deadline and names its own evaluator, the Court of Audit, AIReF or an independent panel, with the date of the first report.

Applied to Democracia 21's list, that means four of the ten problems need a clock before they need anything else, and two need an indicator before they can be promised. From next week the sheet goes with us to housing, and to every party's proposals on it.