MADRID — Spain will hold a snap general election on Nov. 29 after mass protests over the country's housing crisis and the defeat in parliament of a government bill meant to address it.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced the early election in a televised address on the 5th, saying he needed to seek a fresh mandate from the public, Reuters and AFP reported.
Sanchez, who has led the government of the center-left Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), said Spain needed a far larger progressive majority in parliament. Only then, he said, could the country achieve new social progress beyond the interests of entrenched powers and continue to change.
The vote is a high-risk gamble for Sanchez because the Socialists have been trailing in recent opinion polls, Reuters noted. A defeat would eliminate one of the few remaining left-leaning governments in Europe.
Sanchez took office in 2018, and the next general election had originally been scheduled for the summer of next year. The Financial Times said the vote could open the way for a coalition government between the conservative main opposition People's Party (PP) and the far-right Vox party in Spain, the European Union's fourth-largest economy.
According to polling aggregated by Politico Europe, party support as of the 26th of last month stood at 34% for the People's Party, 26% for the Socialists and 18% for Vox. Sumar, the left-wing alliance that governs in coalition with the Socialists, registered 5%.
Sanchez said he was aware that some within the social majority were unhappy at present, and pledged to fight to keep Spain a bastion of openness, social justice and environmental responsibility. He has established himself as a leading figure on the European left, maintaining a relatively generous immigration policy even as anti-immigration far-right forces gain ground across Europe, speaking out actively against war and standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump.
Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz of Sumar said her side would win again, pledging to introduce a cap on monthly rents, shorten working hours and raise the minimum wage. The main opposition People's Party posted a single word on X, formerly Twitter: "Finally." Conservative forces, including the People's Party and the far-right Vox, had long demanded that Sanchez dissolve parliament and call an early election.
People's Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo described the vote as a choice between corruption and decency, between decline and prosperity, and between a government concerned only with its own survival and a country that looks to the future.
Sanchez's government has been backed into a corner. Close associates, including the prime minister's wife, have been investigated over corruption allegations, and the conservative opposition has criticized his relatively generous immigration policy by European standards. In July, a large influx of migrants into the North African autonomous city of Ceuta caused friction with EU member states that take a hard line on immigration, including Italy.
More recently, the forced eviction of an 87-year-old from their home triggered mass protests over Spain's chronic housing shortage. The government hurriedly put forward measures to protect tenants, but the bill collapsed amid opposition resistance. Junts, the Catalan separatist party that once cooperated with Sanchez's government, also opposed the measures as insufficient.
That has prompted the interpretation that Sanchez played the snap election card in the hope that public anger over the failure of the tenant protection bill would translate into broader support from centrist and progressive voters.
The government still lacks a parliamentary majority, leaving it with sharply reduced capacity to push through policy. Even counting the seats of supporting parties alongside those of the Socialists and Sumar in the governing coalition, the total falls short of the opposition. Budget bills have repeatedly failed to pass, and the government is running state finances on the 2023 budget, the last one approved by parliament.
In the last general election in 2023, the People's Party under Feijoo won 137 of the 350 seats in the lower house to become the largest party. But it failed to secure a majority after other smaller parties turned away in protest at its tie-up with the far-right Vox. Sanchez then succeeded in forming a government by drawing support from parties including Catalan separatists.
