Sánchez sets a 29 November election after an evicted tenant dies in Madrid

Spain will hold a snap general election on 29 November. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez confirmed the date on 5 October, after Congress struck down two housing decrees and street protests over rents and evictions spread from city to city. On 7 October the woman whose eviction became the face of those protests died in hospital. She was 87, and was known publicly as Maricarmen.

She had been taken to hospital immediately after bailiffs removed her from her Madrid home. Accounts of her condition described severe exhaustion over months, worse in the two weeks before the eviction and during it. Her death landed two days after Sánchez set the election and a day after the cabinet approved a fresh package of housing measures. The sequence is now the frame of the campaign: a decree defeated in parliament, a date for a vote, a death.

What parliament rejected, and what the cabinet passed again

The earlier decrees failed on the floor, by 178 votes to 172 and 184 to 166. Sánchez then dissolved parliament and his government re-approved emergency housing measures, expanded past the text Congress had rejected. He wants them ratified by the standing commission, the interim body that sits after dissolution, where the votes of Junts are not required. That is a procedural choice as much as a housing policy. It tries to put rules on the books before 29 November without rebuilding the majority that just collapsed.

Euronews counted 21 measures in the package. They include easier routes to rent or buy, longer protection against eviction for vulnerable tenants, rules on room rentals, a tax on seasonal lets, a bar on speculative purchases, and tax treatment for owners and tenants who pay on time. A 10 billion euro fund is meant to offer loans of up to 50,000 euros for a first home, plus subsidies for construction. Compared with the rejected bills, the new decrees add a ban on purchases by funds often called vulture funds, running from 2028 to 2030, mandatory lease extensions, and more disclosure in rental listings. Initial funding for a scheme called Tu Casa is included.

The street and the ballot

Protests over housing had already produced injuries. One tally put injured police officers at 37 by 5 October. In Barcelona, demonstrations turned violent on the same days the government was rewriting the decrees. A general strike has been called for 11 November, eighteen days before the vote. Sánchez has asked for what he called a broader progressive majority and has tried to make housing the question of the election.

The opposition argument is that the decrees are a campaign document issued by a government that lost a vote and then dissolved the chamber that defeated it. The government's argument is that waiting for a new parliament would leave the eviction rules unchanged through the winter. Maricarmen's death gives both sides a name. It does not settle which claim about rents is right. Spain's problem, visible in the measures themselves, is a shortage of homes at the rent tenants can pay in Madrid and Barcelona, plus a stock of short lets that take flats out of the long-lease market.

What a voter can actually check

Three items in the package have dates and numbers attached, which makes them easier to test than the rest. The fund is 10 billion euros. The first-home loan cap is 50,000 euros. The purchase ban on the named funds runs from 2028 to 2030, so it does not touch a transaction this winter even if the standing commission ratifies it. Eviction protection for vulnerable tenants is the clause that would have applied to a case like Maricarmen's, and it is the clause most exposed to court challenge if landlords argue it rewrites existing contracts.

The election is 52 days from the death. Between now and 29 November the standing commission either ratifies the decrees or it does not. If it does, the next government inherits rules it did not pass. If it does not, the campaign is about a package that never took effect. Either way, the ballot Sánchez called on 5 October will be counted against a single eviction in Madrid.