Sánchez sets a 29 November election after Congress kills two housing decrees

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a general election for 29 November on Monday, three days after Congress rejected two emergency housing decrees. He said he needed a broader progressive majority that could overcome the resistance of the elites. The Socialists trail in nearly every published poll. A loss would remove one of the last left-leaning governments in western Europe at a moment when Vox, the far-right party, is positioned to enter government for the first time since the Franco era.

The decrees failed on Friday. Speculation about an early vote built over the weekend. Sánchez had said until recently that he would serve out the legislature and hold the election next summer. Housing protests gave him a reason to go now, and a subject other than the corruption cases around his party and the row over Ceuta.

What the decrees contained

The first decree 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 decree sat in the same package of tenant protections. Parties on the right voted them down. The immediate spark in the streets was the eviction of an 87-year-old woman who could not pay a sharp rent rise. Protests followed in several cities. In Barcelona on the night of 5 October, demonstrators set fires, built barricades and threw projectiles.

Sánchez plans to force the rejected decrees through a device that is rarely used. When the 350-seat Congress is dissolved, a standing body of 68 deputies plus the speaker remains to pass emergency legislation. State broadcaster TVE and El País reported that this body has a 35-34 majority for the housing measures. The arithmetic matters. The decrees can become law during the campaign even though the full chamber has already voted them down.

The opposition's number

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the People's Party, said on Monday that a PP government would almost double homebuilding to 200,000 units a year and cut taxes. He called housing the current government's great failure and said it had to be the next government's success. That 200,000 figure is the concrete counter-offer. It is a construction target, not a rent freeze, and it does not include the eviction ban or the vulture-fund restriction that Congress rejected.

Reuters described the election as a gamble because the Socialists are behind. The People's Party welcomed the vote. Vox has not been in national government. A PP-Vox cabinet would be the first such arrangement in Madrid since the dictatorship. Sánchez, in a televised address, asked his own voters and voters further left to mobilise so that parliament would give a larger progressive majority.

Why housing moved the calendar

Rents in Spanish cities have climbed faster than wages for several years, and short-term tourist lets have taken flats out of the long-term market in Barcelona, Madrid, the islands and the coast. The decrees tried to slow that with a tax on tourist apartments and a block on fund purchases of residential property. They also tried to stop removals of tenants classed as vulnerable through 2030. None of that is now law, unless the standing commission passes it in the weeks before 29 November.

The campaign will turn on whether voters treat Friday's rejection as a reason to enlarge Sánchez's majority or as proof that the minority government cannot pass its own emergency bills. Feijóo's 200,000-home pledge gives the right a number to repeat. The left has the eviction of an 87-year-old and the text of two decrees that did not get through a full Congress. The standing body's 35-34 edge is the detail most coverage has left in the last paragraph. It is how the decrees may still take effect before anyone votes.