World Bulletin / News Desk

A 2018 budget that has still not been approved, a constitutional reform left hanging in the air... Far from a mere territorial issue, the Catalan crisis has also paralysed Spanish politics as a whole.

"This is going to be an exceptionally unproductive legislature," said Jose Fernandez Albertos, a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council.

First and foremost, Spain's national budget for 2018.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative Popular Party (PP) and his allies -- centre-right Ciudadanos and lawmakers from the Canary Islands -- need the support of five MPs from the Basque Country's PNV nationalist party to see it through.

But the PNV has baulked at Madrid's imposition of direct rule on Catalonia after its regional parliament declared unilateral independence on October 27.

So it has so far refused to give its support like it did last year, a position it is likely maintain until a regional election in Catalonia on December 21.