This Monday, Spanish doctors began their third week of strike of 2026. The strikes, called by the five unions of the Strike Committee, will last until next Thursday, April 30, to demand the creation of their own statute and improvements in the working conditions of doctors.
Since the last call at the end of March, Mónica García’s team has held four meetings with medical organizations. In the last week, the ministry proposed to the unions to reduce the working hours of health workers to 40 hours over a period of five yearscompared to the 48 currently in force; as well as the creation of specific areas of negotiation at the regional level, progress considered “insufficient” to call off the strike.
With the conflict running aground, García announced last Sunday that she will be the Más Madrid candidate in the next regional elections in 2027 to try “to get Ayuso and her harmful policies to leave.” The political step, together with the “total absence of progress in the negotiation”, has made the unions ask for “the direct intervention of the president of the Government”.
For the five unions of the Strike Committee (the Spanish Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM), Andalusian Medical Union (SMA), Metges de Catalunya (MC), Association of Doctors and Higher Graduates of Madrid (Amyts), Medical Union of Euskadi (SME) and Union of Independent Practitioners of Galicia (O’MEGA)), the conflict “has reached a decisive point.” The organizations assure that the strikes and demonstrations will not stop until an effective solution is reached, which involves improvements in the working conditions of doctors.
In this scenario, they consider that “the Minister of Health has ceased to be a valid interlocutor” to unblock the strike. “The total absence of progress in the negotiation, its evident political wear and tear, the decision to orient its future towards other political scenarios and the lack of effective decision-making capacity demonstrate that this conflict has already exceeded the scope of his ministry“They say in a statement.
The Strike Committee accuses the Ministry of Health of “lack of will”, which has not proposed “any substantial rectification” of the Framework Statute since an agreement was reached at the Negotiation Table in January. The ministry’s proposal involves a reduction of guards from 24 to 17 hours, with exceptions; a new professional classification and a reduction from 48 to 45 hours per week for doctors.
The agreement would ignore the four main demands of the medical unions: their own statute and scope of negotiation, a 35-hour working day, a professional classification that places them above the rest of the workers in the sector and a reduction in the retirement age, for which on-call hours worked during working life should count.
These requests exceed ministerial powersas the unions admitted on April 23. “Any effective solution to the conflict necessarily requires a reform of the basic legislation of the Statewhich allows the creation of its own negotiation table, as well as the establishment of a specific statute for doctors and physicians,” they expressed.
Pending García’s leap into Madrid politics, the Strike Committee has gone from asking for the minister’s resignation to requesting the intervention by Pedro Sánchezto “guarantee a real, serious negotiation with effective decision-making capacity, which allows unblocking a crisis that affects professionals, patients and autonomous communities.” “Spain deserves strong public healthcare, but there will be no public healthcare without doctors, and there will be no doctors if legislation continues against them,” they conclude.
