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

Pedro Sánchez called a general election for 29 November, eight months before Spain had to go to the polls. He did it on Monday morning from the Palace of Moncloa, less than 72 hours after Congress rejected two royal decree laws his government had written to answer a housing revolt.

The first decree fell by 178 votes to 172. The second fell by 184 to 166. Spain's lower house has 350 seats. Both defeats were narrow enough to show a government that can still assemble a crowd, and clear enough to show that it cannot pass the bills it had tied to the street. A regular election was not due until the summer of 2027 at the latest. Sánchez has been prime minister since 2018.

The rent rise that started the marches

The decrees were drafted after protests that began with a single eviction in Madrid. An 87-year-old woman lost her home after her landlord used what the BBC described as a legal glitch to lift her rent from €500 a month to €2,650. The figure was later cut to €1,650. That reduced sum was still €300 above her monthly pension. Nationwide marches followed last month. On Saturday, about 50 of them ran in cities including Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. For days, hundreds of people have camped in Puerta del Sol.

Sánchez did not pretend the decrees had survived. He told the country his government had made mistakes and had not managed to do everything it set out to do. He said injustices remained, and that he needed a renewed and broader public mandate to pass reforms that would cut inequality. In the same address he asked for "the support of the people" and "a broader progressive majority" able to "overcome the resistance of the elites." He opened with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, claimed a growing economy, and said Spain had become "a world example of peace, feminism and prosperity."

Who gains from an early date

Most published polls, the BBC reported, have the conservative Partido Popular as the largest party after a November vote, short of a majority and looking at Vox for the rest. That is the shape of the 2023 result in reverse of who formed the government. The People's Party won the most seats then and could not assemble a majority. The Socialists finished second and Sánchez stayed in office with Sumar and a set of regional partners. An early election compresses that arithmetic into eight weeks.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the People's Party leader, treated the announcement as a concession. "At last, the majority will speak again. At last, Spaniards will decide," he said. He framed 29 November as a choice between what he called Sánchez's project of personal ambition and a project for Spain, and asked voters whether they wanted four more years of the same or a chance at a change. The party posted a single word on X, "Por fin," and a clip of people laughing. Vox spokesperson Pepa de Millán wrote "Sanchez or Spain." Sumar, the platform to the Socialists' left that holds four coalition partners, answered on Bluesky: "We are ready, and there are more of us." The Socialist account told its own people to work to win again.

What the decrees were supposed to do

The two texts were emergency housing measures, not a full reform of Spain's tenancy law. They were the government's answer to a street that had already decided the €500-to-€2,650 case was not a private dispute. Royal decree laws can be issued and then live or die in Congress within a month. Friday's votes killed both. Sánchez could have tried a third text, or bargained with the regional parties that have kept him in office since 2023. He chose a dissolution instead.

That choice has a cost he named and a cost he did not. The named cost is delay. Nothing in the failed decrees takes effect, and a caretaker period now runs to 29 November, with a government formation after that which could run into 2027. The unnamed cost is the camp in Puerta del Sol. The people sleeping there asked for a rent rule, not a campaign. A November ballot may return a People's Party cabinet that has no interest in the decrees Congress just buried, or a Socialist cabinet still short of the votes it lacked on Friday.

Feijóo's line is that the majority has been waiting to speak. Sánchez's line is that a broader progressive majority can still be built. The numbers from Friday sit between them. A government that lost one bill by six votes and another by eighteen is asking the country to enlarge the minority that could not pass a housing decree. The woman whose rent went from €500 to €2,650, and then to €1,650, is not on the ballot. Her case is the reason the ballot was moved.