Spain’s socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced early elections this morning after his government suffered a bruising legislative defeat last week on emergency measures related to the country’s housing crisis.
In recent weeks, Spaniards have demanded solutions from the government over housing affordability, holding protests in cities across the country after public outrage grew over the televised eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid last month.
Right-wing opposition parties joined forced to scuttle two emergency decrees in Parliament that included measures to reduce evictions and real estate speculation. The setback sparked wide speculation that Sánchez could consider moving up a national election from next year.
In his speech announcing the election, which will be held November 29, Sanchez asked voters to consider whether they wanted Spain to ‘regress or keep moving forward’.
He painted the opposition, who shot down housing reform measures including restrictions on evicting vulnerable tenants and an automatic renewal on tenancies, as a ‘a far-Right coalition that offers no proposals’.
Spain’s main opposition party, the People’s Party, welcomed the announcement of the snap election, sharing a video with the caption: ‘At last.’
Sánchez, 54, has been Spain‘s prime minister since 2018, making him one of Europe’s longest-standing leaders.
Last month, the nation was up in arms over the treatment of 87-year-old pensioner Maricarmen Abascal, who was carried out of the Madrid flat she had been living in for 70 years following a dispute over a proposed 275 per cent rent rise.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced early elections this morning after his government suffered a bruising legislative defeat last week
The woman was removed from the property despite pleas from her supporters
Footage filmed inside showed riot police forcing their way through a barricade of chairs, shelves and a lamp as supporters tried to stop the court-ordered eviction.
Ms Abascal’s father first rented the flat, in the upmarket area of Retiro in central Madrid, in 1956. She remained its tenant after her parents died, with her rent capped under an old tenancy agreement.
Urbagestión Desarrollo e Inversión SL, run by investment brothers Ricardo Alonso Fernández and Fernando Alonso Fuentes, bought the apartment in 2018.
Ms Abascal had been paying around €440 (£379) a month. The firm later proposed €1,650 (£1,420), a rise of 275 per cent, according to Spanish reports. Ms Abascal’s monthly pension is €1,350.
Three previous attempts to evict her were blocked by the courts.
The Bank of Spain estimates that the country is short of 700,000 homes.
Following her eviction, mass protests were seen across the country.
Tens of thousands marched through the Spanish capital over the weekend to protest her eviction and demand stronger protection for tenants amid a housing shortage and soaring rents.
Demonstrators waved posters calling for a general strike after the measures drawn up to address the anger over the eviction of Ms Abascal, alongside other housing issues, were rejected in parliament on Friday.
Footage taken at a protest in Valencia showed protesters charging at riot police with fences, as officers used their batons to strike demonstrators.
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.
Footage filmed inside showed riot police forcing their way through a barricade of chairs, shelves and a lamp as supporters tried to stop the court-ordered eviction
An 87-year-old Spanish pensioner is set to return to the home she was evicted from after a proposed 275 per cent rent increase sparked protests
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 the housing crisis that were well received but were struck down by Right-wing MPs on Friday.
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.
Thousands of demonstrators march through central Madrid, Spain, on September 26, to protest the recent eviction of Maricarmen Abascal
Protesters clash with police at a demonstration over the housing crisis in Valencia, Spain
Protests against short-term rentals across Spain exploded into violence on Saturday, with demonstrators seen throwing fences at riot police
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.
