Spain's Congress kills both housing decrees, 178-172 and 184-166, after Junts walks away

Spain's Congress rejected both of Pedro Sánchez's housing decrees on Friday, by 178 votes to 172 and by 184 to 166. The package would have frozen evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030. It was written after the eviction of María del Carmen Abascal, 87, from her Madrid home. That eviction was later reversed. The decrees still fell.

Junts, the Catalan party that has sometimes voted with the Socialist-led government, pulled its support on Thursday night. The party said the text would cut the supply of rental housing and push prices up, and it asked for the bill to be withdrawn and rewritten. Housing minister Isabel Rodríguez told the chamber the draft already contained 90 percent of what Junts had asked for. The appeal did not move the vote. Without those seats, Sánchez has no majority.

The two numbers are not the same defeat counted twice. Lawmakers voted on two decree-laws. The first lost by six votes, 178 to 172. The second lost by 18, 184 to 166. A decree-law in Spain takes effect when the cabinet approves it and dies if Congress does not ratify it. Both texts are now dead. Hundreds of people outside the chamber chanted at MPs after the results. Spanish papers quoted "shame on you" and "your profits, our misery".

The contents were wider than the eviction freeze. The rejected package included tax breaks for landlords who cut rents, a temporary ban on purchases by investment funds that critics call vulture funds, and taxes and rules on short-term tourist lets. Rodríguez presented that mix as the response to a rent market tightened by tourism, immigration, foreign buyers and a thin stock of public housing. Young tenants on low salaries have been the loudest constituency. Abascal's case gave the cabinet a face and a deadline.

The political consequence is immediate. Sánchez does not control Congress. A general election is not due until next summer. Sources told Spanish media the government would use the weekend to decide whether to dissolve parliament. Calls for an early vote also came from inside the Socialist Party, which has spent the year on an immigration fight and on corruption cases and has been looking for an issue that gathers its own voters. Housing was supposed to be that issue. The vote removed it.

Junts' stated reason is a supply argument. A freeze to 2030, in that view, keeps a sitting tenant in place and tells an owner not to let the flat again. The government answered with the tax break for owners who lower the rent, which is an attempt to pay for the freeze rather than only impose it. Congress never reached a clause-by-clause fight. The party left before the ratification, so the 90 percent figure Rodríguez used was never tested in amendments.

Abascal is back in her home. The decrees that were sold as the guarantee for the next tenant in her position are not. What remains on the books is the law as it stood before the cabinet acted. What remains in politics is a six-vote loss and an 18-vote loss, a Catalan partner that has walked, and a prime minister whose next formal choice is whether to call the election that had been set for the summer of 2027.