Spanish political parties have used multilevel public funding to replace private donations and increase their resources

Following the arrest of a former treasurer of Spain’s ruling People’s Party (PP) earlier this year, party funding has become an important issue in Spanish politics. Juan Rodríguez Teruel writes that successive attempts to reform the regulation of party funding in Spain have created a situation in which Spanish parties are largely funded from public sources. He argues that this reliance on public funding has weakened the voice of party members, and poses additional problems for preventing corruption due to the lack of scrutiny at local levels.