Sánchez calls a 29 November election after parliament blocks two housing decrees

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday called a general election for 29 November, more than half a year before the latest legal date in the summer of 2027. He did it after parliament on Friday rejected two decree laws meant to protect tenants, and after street protests that followed the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from a Madrid flat she had lived in for more than 70 years.

In a televised address he said he needed a broader progressive majority that could overcome the resistance of the elites, deliver new social measures and continue changing Spain. He also said his government had made mistakes and had not achieved everything it set out to do, naming inequality, public services and access to housing. Sánchez has been prime minister since June 2018. His Socialists finished second in 2023. The conservative People's Party won the most seats then and fell short of a majority.

The two decrees that failed

The first decree would have suspended evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030, extended rental leases due to expire before 2028 by two years, raised taxes on tourist apartments, and restricted purchases of homes by funds the government calls vulture funds. The second would have renewed rental contracts automatically. Right-wing deputies voted both down. People's Party official Juan Bravo said housing does not get cheaper with decrees, and that it gets cheaper with more homes.

The case that filled the streets is Maricarmen Abascal. Her rent was raised from 500 euros to 2,650 euros, later cut to 1,650 euros, still about 300 euros above her pension. She was removed on a stretcher on 23 September and taken to hospital. She is now expected to be able to return home. The decrees that failed on Friday were the government's answer to that kind of increase. Protesters had welcomed them. Parliament did not.

The poll arithmetic he is gambling on

Most published polls have the People's Party as the largest force, short of a majority and in need of Vox, the hard-right party, to form a government. A PP-Vox cabinet would be the first time the far right entered national government since the Franco period. Reuters described the snap vote as a high-stakes gamble for that reason: an electoral defeat would end one of the last left-leaning governments in western Europe at a moment when the far right is gaining seats across the region.

Sánchez has called early votes before and survived them. The difference this time is the issue he is holding up. Housing protests have given him a crowd that his corruption troubles and the argument over migration had taken away. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the People's Party leader, welcomed the announcement and said Spaniards would at last be able to decide. He framed the choice as decline or change, lies or change, incompetence or change, division or change, corruption or change.

What 29 November will actually test

The election does not, by itself, build a flat or cut a rent. It asks whether the housing protests move enough votes to enlarge the Socialist-led bloc, or whether they sit on top of a poll lead the People's Party already holds. The failed decrees are now a campaign text. Suspension of vulnerable evictions until 2030, a two-year lease extension, a tourist-apartment tax and a limit on fund purchases are the measures voters can accept or reject. The 500-euro to 1,650-euro rise in Abascal's contract is the example both sides will keep using, because it is a number, a pension gap of about 300 euros, and a woman carried out on a stretcher.