MADRID – Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had hoped to turn widespread frustration over the country’s housing affordability crisis into an advantage when he called a snap election for November. Instead, a high-speed train collided with a stationary train, killing 69 people and casting a shadow over the nation.
The crash was Spain’s second fatal rail accident this year, making the timing particularly damaging for Sánchez.
With the campaign now officially underway, the 54-year-old progressive is trying to prevent the tragedy from overwhelming his appeal to voters. He has presented his administration as prepared to accept responsibility for failures that occur on its watch. At the same time, he has incorporated the disaster into his central campaign argument: that a right-wing government would leave Spaniards worse off as they seek help with housing, healthcare, infrastructure and other essential services.
“If there is one lesson to be drawn from the Urda rail tragedy, it is that public services matter,” Sánchez wrote on X after the collision. “This is what is at stake.”
That message may prove difficult to sell. Until this year, Spain had never recorded a fatal crash on its dedicated high-speed rail lines. Analysts told The Associated Press that the deadly accidents will be difficult for the government to minimize.
Sánchez looks to left-wing victories in Brazil and the U.S.
On the morning of Oct. 28, Sánchez was using social media to deliver an upbeat message:
“There are so many reasons to be optimistic in this country. We respond to the haters with data, intelligence and humor.”
Only minutes earlier, as he would soon discover, a high-speed train south of Madrid had crashed into a stationary train. Emergency authorities were searching through the wreckage for dozens of bodies.
Despite the disaster, Sánchez has maintained an optimistic tone in recent weeks. At campaign events, he has often appeared in red T-shirts carrying aspirational slogans such as “The Strength of Love,” “The Strength of the People” and “Vote with Strength.” He wore one while addressing his campaign launch in Seville on Thursday night, just hours before the official start at midnight.
The Spanish prime minister has also sought to energize supporters by pointing to recent elections in Brazil, where leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won reelection after a comeback victory in a runoff, and in the United States, where Democrats took control of both the Senate and the House.
“It has happened in Brazil, it has happened in the United States, and it will happen in Spain too. The key is mobilization,” he told the newspaper La Vanguardia in an interview this week.
Spain’s prime minister is chosen by Parliament. A candidate must win an absolute majority in the first vote or a simple majority in a second, with coalition deals or support from other parties often determining the outcome.
Sánchez’s approach is designed to “instill a sense of hope, the idea that things can be reversed, that change is possible — and, by doing so, to launch a campaign of optimism and foster a positive outlook,” said Alejandro Quiroga, a political science professor at Madrid’s Complutense University.
Brazilian President Lula will visit Spain on Monday to show his support for the Socialist campaign. It remains uncertain how much Sánchez can gain from the foreign leader’s popularity. Analysts, including Quiroga, and officials from Sánchez’s own party acknowledge that the 2 1/2-week campaign will be driven primarily by domestic issues, including housing, immigration, corruption and last month’s fatal train crash.
Sánchez seeks to turn transport minister’s resignation into political capital
Six days after the rail disaster, Sánchez’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, resigned. His departure came at the end of a parliamentary grilling over the government’s management of Spain’s high-speed rail system, the world’s second-largest after China’s.
Since then, Sánchez and senior officials have repeatedly cited the minister’s resignation as evidence that the government is willing to accept accountability.
“We have stepped forward with absolute transparency,” Sánchez wrote on X soon afterward, describing Puente’s resignation as an “act of dignity.”
Sánchez was notably absent from a state funeral held this week in central Spain for the victims. His decision may have reflected concerns that the service, attended by grieving relatives, could become emotionally charged.
Still, ordinary voters may move on quickly, and Sánchez appears to be relying on that, according to Quiroga. His right-wing opponents, however, are expected to make both crashes central issues in their campaigns and debates, using them to challenge the prime minister’s claims about his record.
“There is a sense of public shock, compounded by the nature of these accidents,” said Montserrat Nebrera, a former conservative politician and political analyst. “It points to a failure in management over the last eight years.”
Several opinion polls conducted before and after the Oct. 28 crash placed Sánchez’s Socialist Party behind the combined support of the conservative Popular Party and the far-right Vox party.
Housing returns to the spotlight after general strike and protests
A nationwide protest over soaring rents and home prices brought more than 100,000 people into the streets of Spain’s largest cities on Wednesday. The timing helped Sánchez, shifting public attention back to the country’s housing crisis on the eve of the election campaign.
The protest formed part of a general strike — Spain’s first in 14 years and the first to be driven primarily by anger over housing costs.
Sánchez’s Socialist Party neither organized nor joined the strike, but his government praised the demonstrators. Housing affordability has traditionally been a stronger issue for the left, and Sánchez has tried to respond to housing activists who have staged regular protests since the widely publicized eviction of an 87-year-old woman.
Opposition parties’ rejection of two emergency housing decrees proposed by Sánchez prompted him to call an early general election for Nov. 29. On Thursday, his government approved one of those measures through the smaller interim Parliament.
Sánchez and his allies hope the move will convince voters that he is acting on their behalf. They also expect the Popular Party’s pledge to repeal the decree if it takes power to motivate supporters at the ballot box.
“Yesterday, the right to housing won on the street and in workplaces, and I hope it will win again at the ballot box,” Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez told lawmakers after the measure passed.
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