Spain goes to the vote. As many had predicted, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced today, Monday 5 October, the calling of early elections for 29 November, after spending the last few days evaluating the strategy to adopt in response to Congress' rejection of his housing decrees, which pushed the country to take to the streets en masse against high rents and real estate speculation. The vote should have taken place in the summer of 2027. Sánchez still claims what his government has done. “We have strived to build a better world for our compatriots by fighting speculators who want to destroy the future of our sons and daughters to increase their income,” he said. The rejected decrees included, among other things, the suspension of evictions for vulnerable people until 2030, measures against so-called "vulture" funds and the automatic renewal of rental contracts.
Sánchez is now launching an appeal to citizens, who will have to choose "what role they want to play: whether to join the far-right wave that regresses where it governs" or "to give Spain a larger progressive majority", so that it continues to be "a bastion of openness and social justice" and a "world point of reference for peace, feminism and prosperity". He asks voters for a new mandate, with more force, to "deepen the reforms still to be done".
The prime minister lashed out harshly against the political opponents of the right-wing forces and in particular against the People's Party, which with Vox and Junts for Catalunya scuttled the housing decrees on 3 October. “We had to fight with a very impetuous Congress and face the worst opposition in the history of Spain. An opposition that did not stop questioning even the legitimacy of our electoral system, blocked measures and voted against policies that were good for the country and did not stop using its regional and municipal power to boycott policies that were good for ordinary people,” he said. "We have also had to fight against very powerful economic and social elites, who do not stand for election but want to continue to control our country," Sánchez added.
The PSOE leader recalled how Spain has never "stopped moving forward" in recent years with the progressive coalition government. And he did not spare himself further criticism of his opponents. The executive "has transferred more resources than ever to the governments of the autonomies, so that they can transfer them to housing, health and public education policies" and "they have purchased penthouses and privatized hospitals", he highlighted, in reference to the scandal in the Madrid region for the purchase of a penthouse with a 200 square meter terrace, intended for the governor of the Popular Party, Isabel Diaz Ayuso.
The leader of the conservatives of the Popular Party, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, rejoices: "Finally Spain will say what it thinks, finally the Spaniards will decide". In 2023 his party was the most voted, but was unable to form a government: the only political formation available was the far-right Vox. The latest polls show the PP at least 6 points ahead of the PSOE and Vox on the rise: together the right would obtain over 190 seats, compared to the majority of 175 in Parliament, according to the latest findings. This summer's migration crisis in Ceuta also weighs on the vote.
Over the weekend, the belief had already spread that Sánchez would call early elections: yesterday afternoon he had already informed King Felipe VI, who was currently on a state visit to Finland. In the PSOE the majority pushed for the immediate vote, considering the housing mobilization a political opportunity to transform the parliamentary defeat into an electoral campaign. The socialists' reasoning is that, after Junts' vote against, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a year of legislature without a new budget law and with a parliamentary majority capable of supporting the government's action. The issue of housing, which mobilizes millions of Spaniards, offers the PSOE the possibility of accusing the right-wing and Catalan independentists of having prevented the government from intervening in the housing emergency.
Even before the prime minister's announcement, government sources had reiterated their desire to guarantee the approval of the housing measures rejected by Congress, regardless of the calling of early elections. One option under consideration is for the government to approve at least one new decree containing such measures, which would then be voted on by the permanent delegation of Congress within 30 days. The body has the authority to proceed in this direction after the dissolution of Parliament and - unlike what would happen in the plenary - the vote of Junts would not be necessary to ratify the initiative.
The wave of street protests was triggered by the rejection of the decrees, but it has deeper roots. The trigger was the case of Maricarmen (Maria del Carmen Abascal), an 87-year-old woman with a recognized 50% disability, who on 23 September was evicted from the house where she had lived for 71 years in Madrid, in the Retiro neighbourhood. The Urbagestión investment fund, which acquired the property in 2018, had increased its rent by 250%. On September 28, after the news had become prominent throughout the country, an agreement was announced between the company and the elderly woman's family, to allow her to return to live in the same accommodation, paying a sustainable rent. The case has reinvigorated a general discontent that has been spreading for years in Spain due to the exponential growth of rents, starting from those of Madrid and Barcelona, but also of other main cities, such as Valencia, Granada and Alicante, all theaters of the protests.
