Spain's Sanchez calls snap election for November 29 after housing decrees defeated

Spain is going back to the polls. On Monday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez dissolved parliament and called snap general elections for November 29, gambling that anger over the housing crisis will deliver him the governing majority that parliament has denied him for two years.

The immediate trigger came Friday, when the Congress of Deputies rejected two emergency decrees at the heart of the government's housing plan: automatic renewal of tenancy contracts, protections against evicting vulnerable tenants, a ban on evictions through 2030, higher taxes on tourist apartments, and curbs on home purchases by investment funds Sanchez calls vulture funds. The conservative People's Party, the far right Vox, and Junts per Catalunya, the Catalan separatists whose votes have kept Sanchez in power since 2023, all voted no.

The defeat landed in a country already in the streets. On September 23, while Sanchez was in New York for the UN General Assembly, an 87 year old Madrid retiree, Maricarmen Abascal, was evicted from the flat she had lived in for decades after an investment fund bought the building. Her case became the symbol of a national crisis of rents and prices. Protesters pitched a tent camp in Madrid's Puerta del Sol that has now stood for more than a week. On Saturday, tens of thousands marched in Madrid and other cities demanding action. The Madrid Tenants' Union, one of the protest's organizers, is calling for a general strike, with spokeswoman Alicia del Rio declaring the wave of indignation unstoppable.

Sanchez, speaking from the Moncloa palace, asked voters to "renew people's support" and give him "a much broader progressive majority" that could "overcome vested interests, deliver new social advances and continue transforming Spain." He acknowledged failure with unusual bluntness for a sitting prime minister: "I know that part of this social majority is dissatisfied today," he said, admitting his government had made mistakes and fallen short of promises.

It is a risky bet. The next election was not due until August 2027. Polls put the People's Party ahead, and the most likely outcome is a coalition led by the People's Party with Vox support, which would bring a far right party into Spain's central government for the first time since democracy returned after Franco. The PP greeted the announcement with a social media video tagged "AT LAST." Sanchez framed the choice as one between a progressive majority and joining what he called a regressive far right wave sweeping Europe, pointing to the AfD's rise in Germany and the National Rally's strength in France. Immigration is also flaring as an issue after thousands of migrants crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco this summer.

Sanchez has survived this way before. He has been prime minister for eight years and has repeatedly turned apparent dead ends into victories, most recently in 2023 when he called a snap election few expected him to survive and emerged still standing. Whether the housing anger he is now trying to ride belongs to him or to the protesters in Puerta del Sol is the question the next seven weeks will answer.