Malaga doctors suspend indefinite strike action until after Spain's general election

The suspension provides immediate relief for public health administration, averting severe delays and cancellations across outpatient clinics and surgical operating schedules.

However, the strike committee emphasised that the call for action remains active and will resume if the incoming government fails to address long-standing medical sector grievances.

Union leaders explained that the official call for general elections fundamentally altered the legislative landscape. The dissolution of Parliament formally halts all bills under consideration, rendering the draft framework statute promoted by the Ministry of Health invalid.

"In political terms, the framework statute promoted by the Ministry of Health is dead in the water," the strike committee declared in a statement. "If the new chamber wishes to revive it, it would have to restart the legislative process from the beginning."

Medical unions are calling on all political parties contesting the 29 November election to explicitly include doctors' working conditions and statutory reforms in their campaign manifestos.

The contested draft framework statute proposed a maximum 45-hour working week alongside on-call shifts lasting up to 17 hours. Doctors strongly object to these terms, demanding a dedicated statutory framework tailored specifically to medical professionals that eliminates mandatory 24-hour shifts—where a 17-hour on-call period is added directly onto a standard eight-hour workday.

Physicians are also demanding that overtime and on-call hours be paid at higher rates and counted toward retirement pensions. Under current regulations, on-call duty does not accrue pension credits, despite accumulating significant extra labor over a physician's career.

According to Antonio Martín Noblejas, president of the Malaga Medical Union (SMM), uncounted on-call hours amount to between five and seven years of additional working time over a standard 38-year career.

The suspension follows an intense period of labor unrest. In 2025, Malaga and Andalucía experienced four medical strikes. Between February and June 2026, a five-week national protest campaign against the framework statute resulted in 24 individual days of strike action alongside targeted primary care walkouts.

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