Armengol spends more than four million on the earpieces that Sánchez granted to the independence movement

Spaniards needing simultaneous translation to speak among themselves. For now, this has a price of almost four million euros in three years, but the Congress of the earpieces is on track to represent a bite of nearly five million of public money by the end of the legislature in 2027. It was one of the demands that Junts and ERC imposed on the PSOE to be able to start the legislature and that was consummated in the obligation to pay for an interpretation and translation service in the Lower House so that Catalan, Basque, Galician, and Valencian could be used in parliamentary debates, and not only Spanish, as had happened until then because it is the language that all citizens speak and understand.

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Three years will have passed next Monday since this toll to Pedro Sánchez. It was one of the conditions that Catalan independence forced on the socialist leader to make Francina Armengol the new president of Congress on August 17, 2023, and to begin building the bloc that would later facilitate his investiture, with an amnesty law in between. But before that, the red line was Catalan. Sánchez forced the functions of an interim government by requesting by letter to the EU that Catalan, Galician, and Basque be official languages in Europe – something that has not yet happened to this day -. And in parallel, Armengol, on the day of her election as president, unilaterally announced without reforming the Congress Rules that the co-official languages could already be used.

Thus began the payment of the counterpart to Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras in exchange for their votes. Today, the economic bill for hiring translators in Congress would be approaching four million euros, according to calculations that EL MUNDO has been able to make with official data from 2023, 2024, and 2025 and an estimate for 2026.

Adapting the rooms with the equipment involved an expense of 1.6 million

If the legislature runs its course on time, the final cost will point towards five million despite the boycott by PP and Vox, laziness, weariness, or the pragmatism of the media impact that Spanish has, it is increasingly common to see how a large majority of deputies do not even use the earpieces anymore. It is true that they always have the option to look at the subtitles on the screen, but often not even that. Junts is inflexible with the use of Catalan, but Gabriel Rufián prefers Spanish. Just like the PNV or EH Bildu do to deliver their strongest messages, although they use both languages in their interventions.

Congress had foreseen a maximum cost of 12.5 million euros in translation for the entire legislature, according to the public contract tender, however, the reality has been very different. And this has much to do with the low legislative production taking place in Congress due to the fluctuations of the majority on which the PSOE and Sumar government rests. There are fewer days with Plenary sessions – many Thursdays there is no session – and fewer commission meetings to finalize laws.

Every day the use of the earpiece is more residual, there is more pragmatism

So, even though the translation companies awarded the contract in January 2025 for 3,990,315 euros for 18 months, it obliges them to bill for the exact minutes of their services in plenary sessions and commissions or for the words of the texts they translate. If there are fewer, they earn less.

Since they are having less work than expected, in the 12 months of 2025 they earned 919,669 euros, according to data from the Transparency Portal published by Europa Press. An estimate for the entire 18 months – there are no official data for 2026 – would raise the cost figure to about 1.4 million. Much less than the awarded amount.

There are complete data on what the interpreters of the co-official languages to Spanish cost in 2023 and 2024, since Congress had to make minor contracts and the prices are published on the Chamber’s website. This happened until the full service tender was officially awarded to four companies.

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The annual cost of translation rises to one million euros per year

Specifically, between the end of 2023 and all of 2024, 424 minor contracts were made for an amount of 674,418 euros, according to EL MUNDO’s calculations. To this is added 17,870 euros in transcriptions.

Also, the most important cost was related to the supply and installation of the conference system in the Constitutional, Cánovas, and Sagasta rooms and the equipment to enable remote simultaneous interpretation and subtitling in five Congress rooms. The company Telesonic was awarded this for 1,633,500 euros. This item is supposed to be exceptional until a renewal.

The drop in sessions makes the price lower than expected

All these contracts are added to the official data collected by Europa Press on the full service in 2025, already with the official award, making a total of 3,245,458 euros.

The official figure for 2026 is still missing. If it is like in 2025, by May or June 2027 the full bill for the legislature of the earpieces would rise to 4.6 million. All, always, depending on the activity. This is the price it would take for deputies to listen to each other. Another thing is wanting to understand each other.