Spain’s Prime Minister Calls Snap Election Amid Anger Over Housing Crisis

Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called an early general election after his government suffered a damaging parliamentary defeat over emergency measures aimed at tackling the country’s housing crisis.

The election will take place on November 29. Pressure on the government has intensified in recent weeks as Spaniards demand action on housing affordability, with protests breaking out in cities nationwide after public anger over the televised eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid last month.

Right-wing opposition parties joined forces in Parliament to defeat two emergency decrees containing measures designed to curb evictions and real estate speculation. The setback fueled speculation that Sánchez might bring forward the national election, which had been expected next year.

Announcing the election, Sánchez asked voters to decide whether Spain should “regress or keep moving forward.”

He described the opposition parties that rejected housing reforms—including restrictions on evicting vulnerable tenants and automatic tenancy renewals—as a “far-right coalition that offers no proposals.”

Spain’s main opposition party, the People’s Party, welcomed the snap election announcement, posting a video with the caption: “At last.”

Sánchez, 54, has served as Spain’s prime minister since 2018, making him one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders.

Last month, the country was outraged by the treatment of 87-year-old pensioner Maricarmen Abascal, who was removed from the Madrid apartment where she had lived for 70 years after a dispute over a proposed 275 per cent rent increase.

Footage filmed inside the apartment showed riot police breaking through a barricade made of chairs, shelves and a lamp as supporters attempted to prevent the court-ordered eviction.

Ms Abascal’s father first rented the apartment in Retiro, an upmarket area of central Madrid, in 1956. She continued living there after her parents died, paying rent capped under an old tenancy agreement.

Urbagestión Desarrollo e Inversión SL, an investment company run by brothers Ricardo Alonso Fernández and Fernando Alonso Fuentes, bought the property in 2018.

Ms Abascal had been paying about €440 (£379) a month, but the company later proposed raising the rent to €1,650 (£1,420)—an increase of 275 per cent, according to Spanish reports. Her monthly pension is €1,350.

Courts had previously blocked three attempts to evict her.

The Bank of Spain estimates that the country faces a shortage of 700,000 homes.

Her eviction triggered mass protests across Spain.

Tens of thousands of people marched through Madrid over the weekend, protesting her removal and demanding stronger tenant protections as the country grapples with a housing shortage and soaring rents.

Protesters held signs calling for a general strike after Parliament rejected measures on Friday that had been drafted in response to anger over the eviction, as well as wider housing concerns.

Video from a protest in Valencia showed demonstrators charging at riot police with fences, while officers used batons to strike protesters.

Protesters also shouted insults at officers as they broke through a police barricade.

Sanchez has stood out globally for taking a strong stance on progressive issues from Palestinian statehood to defending multilateral institutions and cracking down on ‘tech oligarchs’, even as a series of setbacks and scandals weakened his position at home.

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Facing the electorate now is a risky move as Sanchez’s Socialist Party is trailing in opinion polls. However, he has been boosted by proposals to tackle a mounting housing crisis that were well received but were struck down by right-wing MPs on Friday, leading to planned new public protests about housing.

An election defeat would spell the end of one of Europe’s last few left-leaning governments at a time when the far-right is making unprecedented gains across the region as a growing swathe of European voters desert the centre ground.

Opinion polls suggest a coalition led by the conservative People’s Party (PP) with the support of Vox is the most likely outcome in Spain, ushering a far-right party into central government for the first time since the return of democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco.

Still, Sanchez, a wily political operator, has proven time and again his ability to surprise those who had long written him off.

Despite never winning enough votes to form a majority government, he has cobbled together a series of fragile and seemingly impossible coalitions including voices from the far-left to the separatist right to remain in power for three successive terms lasting eight years.

But growing fragmentation among his partners has meant the government has passed little in the way of legislation in its third term and failed to pass a budget since 2023, even as Spain’s economy has continued to be one of the best performing in the developed world. 

Sanchez took office after leading a move to oust centre-right Mariano Rajoy in the wake of major corruption scandals within Rajoy’s People’s Party. 

However, senior members of Sanchez’s own Socialist Party have in the past year faced allegations of graft, dragging down the party’s already weak approval rating which has hovered at around 26-31% throughout his tenure.

Against the odds, he won a second four-year term in office in 2023 despite heavy losses in earlier regional and local elections by negotiating support from a loose alliance of parties in parliament.

That was achieved after promising a highly controversial amnesty for pro-independence Catalan leaders in exchange for their support, a move still bitterly remembered by many voters as a betrayal of Spanish unity.

Sanchez won early plaudits for moves including the exhumation of Franco from a mausoleum the dictator built for himself outside Madrid, and the reform of a labour law that has seen unemployment fall to its lowest level in almost two decades.

He cemented his humanitarian and pro-immigration credentials early by saying in June 2018 that Spain would accept the Aquarius migrant rescue ship and its 629 passengers, after Italy and Malta both refused to let the ship dock in their harbours.

As other European countries have toughened their policies towards foreign arrivals, Sanchez has consistently argued that immigration is essential for sustaining Spanish growth by plugging gaps in key sectors such as construction, agriculture and hospitality and for providing revenue to prop up Spain’s strained welfare system.

More recently, his refusal to agree to US-led demands to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP while pivoting toward China has rattled US President Trump and some European leaders concerned about the threat of the bloc being flooded with Chinese goods.

Sanchez’s housing measures provided a rare chance for the Socialist leader to pitch himself as the leader of a mobilised left and distract from the more politically damaging issues of the migrant crisis in Ceuta and corruption scandals, said Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quiros, economist and president of consultancy Freemarket Corporate Intelligence.

‘This is a window of opportunity,’ de Quiros said. ‘If he does not call elections fast, (those topics) will return to centre stage.’

More to follow.