Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called an early general election for 29 November, after parliament threw out two housing decrees put forward by his minority government. The vote had not been due until the summer of 2027 at the latest.
In a televised address on Monday, Sánchez said he needed a broader progressive majority to push reforms past what he called the resistance of the elites. His Socialist party governs with the smaller Sumar alliance and has no majority in parliament. Sánchez has led the country since June 2018. After the 2023 election, in which the conservative People’s Party won the most seats but fell short of a majority, he stayed in office through agreements with left-wing parties and Catalan and Basque nationalist and pro-independence groups.
The housing crisis came to a head with the case of Maricarmen Abascal, 87, who was forcibly evicted on 23 September from the Madrid flat she had lived in for more than 70 years. A legal glitch let her landlord raise the rent from €500 to €2,650, later cut to €1,650, which is still €300 more than her monthly pension. She was carried out on a stretcher and later admitted to hospital, although her lawyer says she will be able to return home. On Saturday, tens of thousands of people marched in Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona and other cities to demand stronger protection for tenants.
The government answered with two decree laws. The first would have suspended evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030, extended by two years any rental leases due to expire before 2028, and raised taxes on tourist apartments. The second, which included automatic renewal of rental contracts, was more divisive. Juan Bravo of the People’s Party argued that “housing doesn’t get cheaper with decrees, it gets cheaper with more homes”.
Sánchez enters the campaign under pressure on several fronts. His wife, Begoña Gómez, was charged with corruption in April, which she denies. Police raided the Socialist party’s Madrid headquarters in May, and former transport minister José Luis Ábalos was jailed for 24 years over kickbacks from the sale of face masks during the Covid-19 pandemic. He was also criticised over the Ceuta migration crisis this summer. Most polls put the People’s Party in first place, though it would be expected to need the hard-right Vox party to form a government. Its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, responded: “At last, Spaniards will be able to decide”.
