Sanchez sets a 29 November election after Congress rejects the housing decrees

Pedro Sanchez has called a Spanish general election for 29 November, eight months before the current term was due to end. He announced the date on Monday, three days after Congress voted down two government decrees meant to slow evictions and extend rental contracts.

The legislative term was scheduled to run until summer 2027. Sanchez, prime minister since 2018, leads a minority left coalition that has needed Catalan and Basque votes to pass budgets. On Friday the People's Party, Vox and Junts voted against the housing package. Alberto Nunez Feijoo, the People's Party leader, had already told Sanchez to call an election, saying the government had the support of neither the streets nor parliament.

The decrees were drawn up after weeks of protests. The spark was the eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid. Her rent had been raised from 500 euros to 2,650 euros. It was later cut to 1,650 euros, still about 300 euros above her monthly pension. BBC reporting said she had lived in the flat for more than seven decades and that the eviction was later reversed. The case travelled quickly because it was easy to count. A pension that cannot cover a revised rent is a political number, not a slogan.

The measures Congress rejected included a suspension of evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030 and an automatic renewal of rental contracts. BBC reporting also listed a two-year extension for leases due to expire before 2028, higher taxes on tourist apartments, and a restriction on purchases of residential property by funds the government described as speculative buyers. Sanchez's office has said the Council of Ministers will reapprove the bills before parliament is dissolved, so that a standing committee can vote on them after the chambers stop sitting. He has 30 days to get the measures ratified. Dissolution may close that window in the full Congress and leave the committee route as the only one still open.

A decade of prices, then a Friday vote

The price record behind the protests is not new, which is why the election timing matters. Politico, citing national figures, reported that average home prices rose 80 percent between 2015 and 2025 and rents rose 87 percent, while salaries rose 30 percent. Spain's National Statistics Institute puts the share of people aged 18 to 34 who still live with their parents at 69 percent, a rate higher only in Croatia among the countries in that comparison. Those three numbers explain why a single Madrid eviction could fill squares. The gap between rent and pay has been building for a decade. The Friday vote made it a question of who controls the next four years.

Most published polls have the People's Party as the largest party, with Sanchez's Socialists behind. A PP plurality would still need Vox, or an abstention from another party, to form a government. Santiago Abascal of Vox said he was glad the election had been called and called the result uncertain, pointing to 2023, when polls also favoured a conservative combination and Sanchez still assembled a majority. Yolanda Diaz of Sumar said her side would win again and restated plans to cap rents, shorten the working day and raise the minimum wage. Salvador Illa, the Catalan president, said Catalonia would stand with Sanchez. Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, the Madrid mayor, called the election a move for political survival and said it was not about housing.

Sanchez framed the choice as a request for a broader progressive majority to pass the housing bills. Feijoo framed it as a choice between what he called the prime minister's project of personal ambition and a change of government. Neither formulation settles the arithmetic. Spain's Congress has 350 seats. A majority is 176. The current coalition has governed below that line by trading support vote by vote. A November election does not, by itself, produce a majority for either bloc.

The practical calendar is short. Campaigning will run through November while the standing committee may still be asked to ratify the housing decrees. If the committee passes them and the election then returns a conservative majority, the next government can repeal them. If Sanchez returns with a wider left and nationalist bloc, the decrees become the first bill of a new term rather than the last act of a dying one.

Renters will watch two clocks. One is the 29 November count. The other is whether the standing committee acts before a new Congress is seated. A decree that survives the committee and then loses a later repeal vote would have been in force for only a few weeks. A decree that dies in the committee leaves the next government to start again, with the 80 percent price rise and the 87 percent rent rise still on the table. The 69 percent of young adults still at home is the figure campaign posters will have trouble ignoring. The rest is a count that will not be known until the night of 29 November.