Spain's caretaker house of 69 takes up the housing decrees parliament killed

Pedro Sánchez's government on Tuesday approved again the housing decrees that Congress rejected last week, using the caretaker window he opened by calling a snap election for 29 November. The texts cover rent caps, a temporary ban on evictions, and limits on corporate purchases of homes. They take effect for a time once they are printed in the official state gazette, and they then have to be sent to the standing body that remains after dissolution. A second decree, on automatic renewal of rental contracts, does not take effect unless that reduced house approves it. The government did not have a majority for that one in the full Congress.

Dissolution is the mechanism, and the arithmetic is the story. With parliament dissolved, a permanent deputation of 69 members stays in place, including lower-house speaker Francina Armengol of the Socialist Party. State broadcaster TVE reported that this body has a slim majority for the measures. That is a different chamber from the one that voted the decrees down. Last week's tallies, 178-172 and 184-166 in the 350-seat Congress, fell because Junts sided with the Popular Party and Vox. Those 178 and 184 votes are not sitting this week. The 69 are.

Sánchez described the package as plain common sense. He said the measures protect the most vulnerable and start to put order into a market he called deeply dysfunctional, one that in his account does not follow supply and demand because of speculation. He also said surveys showed the public favoured intervention. He did not cite a pollster or a sample. The election call itself, made after the Friday defeat, rests on his claim that he needs more seats to pass a housing response. The vote that was due in 2027 is now set for 29 November.

The trigger on the street remains the attempted eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid, later reversed, which set off marches in the capital and in other cities. On Monday, after the election was called, a Barcelona rally that organisers put at 120,000 and the Guardia Urbana put at about 20,000 turned violent once the main body had left. Police said 30 officers were injured and 13 people were arrested. Fires were set near the Passeig de Gràcia. Some of those still on the street carried banners of the POUM, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, a name from the Civil War. Tenant unions have talked of a general strike before the election. Sánchez said the government would respect the protests.

Developers have answered on the investment side. Carolina Roca, president of the Association of Property Developers of Madrid, said the legal uncertainty in both decrees would bring a sharp slowdown in the limited investment so far secured for affordable housing. That is the counter-claim the caretaker vote does not erase. A decree that can be validated by 69 members, and that may fall again if the 29 November result returns a hostile Congress, is a weak basis for a multi-year building loan. Rent caps and a pause on evictions change the cash flow of a standing lease. They do not, by themselves, add a flat.

The gazette step is the part tenants will feel first. Once published, the rent cap, the eviction pause and the limit on corporate buying have temporary force, even before the 69 vote. The automatic-renewal text is different. It waits. A lease that was due to end in November is therefore under two clocks: the gazette, and the deputation. Armengol's standing body can validate or bury each text. It cannot, as a caretaker house, write a new housing law with a fresh budget line.

Average rents are the background number already on the file. They have moved from 8.20 euros a square metre in 2016 to 15.1 euros in 2026. That rise is why a rejected decree became an election. Tuesday's approval does not reverse the Friday votes. It moves the same texts into a smaller room, with a majority TVE says is slim, and with a second text still short of force. The open question is whether the 69 validate both before the campaign hardens, and whether a developer reading Roca's warning stops a site that the decrees were written to speed.