Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a snap election for 29 November after failing to secure parliamentary support for emergency housing measures, with polls placing the Popular Party ahead at about 34 percent and the Socialists at 26 percent.

Spain faces a structural housing shortage of roughly 700,000 homes that has driven rents and prices sharply higher since 2020; the article argues that short-term decrees cannot substitute for increased construction.

The author contends that Sánchez has remained in office despite more than 1,000 days without a new national budget and corruption convictions involving close allies, contrary to the standards he applied to his predecessor in 2018.

Over the next couple of months, you’ll hear a lot about Pedro Sánchez. On October 5, prompted by his failure to secure parliamentary support for measures addressing Spain’s housing crisis, the country’s Socialist prime minister called a general election for November 29, several months ahead of schedule. Sánchez seeks a proper mandate for his minority coalition and hopes to get more Socialists elected by capitalizing on public anger over the housing situation. But polls currently put the Conservative Popular Party (PP) first with 34% of the vote, followed by the Socialists with 26%. To govern, the PP would need the support of Vox (a center-right party that has already partnered with the Conservatives in several regional administrations), which is expected to come in third with around 18%.

Public anger over Spain’s housing crisis flared up last month, when an 87-year-old woman was evicted from her Madrid flat because she couldn’t afford a rent increase (she has since died). The Spanish right’s rejection of the measures Sánchez hastily prepared in response—including a ban on evictions until 2030, higher taxes on tourist flats, and restrictions on private investment firms active in the residential sector—fueled this outrage. Sánchez hopes to pass a modified version of the emergency package through a reduced parliament before the election; but even if he does, he won’t solve Spain’s housing problems.

The emergency measures are exactly that: short-term holdovers that fail to address the fundamental structural issues. Spain is running a deficit of around........

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