Spain’s Leader Is Betting His Government on the Housing Crisis
· Time
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain called for early elections on Monday after Parliament last week rejected two key housing decrees amid widespread protests over rising rents and housing scarcity. The elections, originally scheduled to take place next summer, will now be held on Nov. 29.
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One of the decrees was a relief package aiming to extend eviction protections for vulnerable households, regulate rentals, and offer tax relief and assistance for renters, landlords, and first-time homebuyers, while the other aimed to offer greater stability for renters by establishing automatic renewals.
The rejected measures came from Sánchez’s governing coalition, comprising his Socialist Party, PSOE, and the left-wing alliance Sumar. The coalition lacks a majority in Parliament and must rely on other parties to pass legislation. That dependence leaves the government vulnerable when those parties withhold their support—which is what played out with the two housing measures on Oct. 2.
In calling early elections, Sánchez is hoping voters will give his coalition enough support in Parliament to advance its housing agenda—but risks handing his opponents the majority instead.
“To do more, we need to renew and expand the people’s support,” Sánchez said in a statement on Monday.
But he faces a central challenge: persuading voters to blame the parties that blocked his proposals, rather than his government, for the lack of relief.
Various parties have offered differing explanations for why they rejected the decrees.
Junts—a Catalan pro-independence party—said in a statement Oct. 1 that many of the proposed measures would reduce the supply of rental homes and drive up prices, making housing even harder to access for people with lower incomes. Juan Bravo, housing spokesman for the conservative PP party, said on Oct. 2 that the government was proposing significant market interventions without adequately addressing the shortage of homes through construction.
Sergio Nasarre Aznar, a professor of civil law at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, agrees with some of the points the parties have made in opposing the decrees, telling TIME that “what Pedro Sánchez is proposing will cause a serious breakdown of the housing market”—making it even more difficult to access housing.
He also argues that the measures could make housing harder to access by increasing legal uncertainty. He warns of “the threat of future court rulings annulling some of the measures.”
Sánchez’s opponents are also choosing to emphasize other issues, including immigration: Vox leader Santiago Abascal, for instance, has made tougher migration policies a condition of supporting a future government with the conservative PP.
The move is also a gamble because Sánchez’s party may need to overcome blowback over corruption scandals, its handling of migration, and repeated difficulty securing support in Parliament.
Pablo Simón, a political scientist with the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, tells TIME that focusing on housing could help Sánchez move beyond those difficulties and engage progressive voters.
“After months dominated by corruption scandals, parliamentary weakness, and government fatigue, housing gives Sánchez an issue around which he believes he may be able to mobilize key parts of the progressive electorate again,” he says, “particularly younger voters, renters and voters in large cities.”
How did housing become the breaking point?
Spain’s housing supply has struggled to keep pace with demand in recent years, and an increasingly unaffordable market has become a growing pressure point, with the Bank of Spain showing an estimated housing shortfall of 750,000 homes accumulating from 2021 to 2025.
The Spanish Youth Council’s 2025 report showed an average monthly rent of €1,176, the equivalent of roughly $1,317, which then represented 98.7% of a young person’s average salary in Spain.
But public outrage came to a head in September when an 87-year-old woman was evicted from her home in Madrid after occupying the unit for decades. Thousands of protestors took to the streets.
Simón believes that the Prime Minister sees their fury as an opportunity.
“Sánchez is taking advantage of what is probably the best window of opportunity available to minimize PSOE losses,” he says. “If he manages to make the campaign revolve around this issue, he could hope to close the gap with the PP and, in the most favourable scenario for him, even compete to finish as the largest party.”
That does not mean Sánchez expects to win an outright majority, Simón cautions.
And he further questions if housing can become a decisive voting issue.
“It is clearly one of Spain's most important social problems and has a strong capacity to generate political mobilization, but that does not necessarily mean it will determine how people vote,” he says.
What is at stake in the election?
With a snap election, Sánchez is gambling that the housing issue will remobilize the left and give his coalition more seats in Parliament to advance its proposals.
But even if the Prime Minister succeeds in putting housing at the center of the campaign, Simón says, “that does not automatically mean that the PSOE will be the party that benefits electorally from it.”
The PP, Vox and Junts could still hold enough seats between them to block Sánchez’s housing proposals, he says, noting that far-right Vox is “growing strongly.”
Politico polling from Sept. 26 shows Sánchez entering the election campaign at a disadvantage, with PP at 34% of the vote share next to PSOE’s 26%. Vox follows at 18%, while Sumar holds some 5%. Those figures predate the election announcement and do not directly predict parliamentary seats.
“It is widely assumed that the right-wing bloc will secure an absolute majority,” Simón says, “so the main question is not whether Sánchez can remain in government, but how much he can limit the scale of the defeat.”
A defeat for Sánchez could have consequences beyond its borders. A government led by the conservative PP, potentially with far-right Vox, would reinforce Europe’s shift to the right, alongside conservative-led Germany and far-right-led Italy. It could also remove a prominent progressive voice from European debates over immigration, defense spending, and relations with Israel.
If Sánchez secures the greater parliamentary support he’s seeking, meanwhile, it would not guarantee relief from rising housing costs.
Previous efforts illustrate the difficulties. Spain’s 2023 housing law enabled rent limits in designated high-pressure areas, but implementation has varied by region. Attempts to tighten rules on temporary rentals have also encountered parliamentary resistance. A subsequent rental-regulation proposal advanced in December 2024, showing that negotiations could overcome some divisions. But support for debating the legislation did not mean agreement on its substance.
At the same time, expanding public housing requires years of investment and cooperation between national and regional authorities. A new parliamentary majority would not, on its own, remove those obstacles. And Simón says it remains unclear which party can claim ownership of the housing issue.
“Voters assign responsibility to different levels of government, and there is no broad consensus on the appropriate solutions,” he explains.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative PP, said on Monday that he believes Sánchez called the election out of fear—but he supports the decision.
"These are not elections like the previous ones: This is about Spain defeating Sánchez and what he represents,” he said.
He acknowledged the housing crisis has yet to be addressed, claiming that “the cost of living is unbearable” in Spain and that “housing is out of reach.”
Vox leader Abascal commented on Monday that focusing on “national priority, deregulation, and remigration” would be the conditions for a potential governing alliance with the PP.
What is the process of calling for a snap election in Spain?
Following Sánchez’s announcement, elections are set to take place Nov. 29. The call for early elections is fairly common and reflects a core element of Spain’s electoral process.
Spain’s Constitution allows the prime minister, after consulting the Cabinet, to seek the early dissolution of Parliament and a new election. The king formally issues the decree; however, this action is a formality.
Sánchez’s office said Monday that King Felipe VI’s election decree would be published Tuesday.
The previous election was July 23, 2023, and parliamentary terms normally last four years, meaning that the latest possible date to hold elections would have been Aug. 22, 2027.
No official date had been set when Sánchez called to move up the timeline by as many as nine months.
Sánchez has called early elections before: in 2019, after Parliament rejected his budget, and in 2023, after his party suffered losses in local and regional elections. The PP won the most seats in the July 2023 vote, but Sánchez ultimately secured enough parliamentary support to remain Prime Minister.