Sánchez Calls a Spanish Election for 29 November
Pedro Sánchez has called a snap general election for 29 November, in a televised address three days after parliament threw out his two housing decrees and two days after tens of thousands marched in Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona. Spain was not due to vote until the summer of 2027. He said he needed “a broader progressive majority” able to “overcome the resistance of the elites”.
It is an unusually frank pitch for a sitting prime minister. “We have made mistakes and have not achieved everything we had set out to do,” Mr Sánchez said, naming inequality, public services and access to housing as the unfinished work. He has governed since June 2018 and, since 2023, as the leader of a minority coalition that finished second: the People’s Party won most seats and fell short, and he survived on Catalan and Basque votes. The decrees that fell on Friday would have suspended evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030, extended leases expiring before 2028, raised taxes on tourist flats and restricted purchases by investment funds; the second, automatic renewal of rental contracts, was the tenants’ union’s central demand. Behind all of it is one eviction: Maricarmen Abascal, 87, carried out of the Madrid flat she had lived in for more than seventy years on a stretcher on 23 September, after a legal gap let her rent go from €500 to €2,650, later cut to €1,650 — still some €300 above her pension. Alberto Núñez Feijóo welcomed the vote: “At last, Spaniards will be able to decide,” framing it as a choice between “decline or change”. Most polls point to his party emerging largest but needing Vox to govern. Watch whether the left’s junior partner holds together across a 55-day campaign.