Sánchez calls early elections in Spain for 29 November after defeat over housing package

The package included measures against evicting tenants, improvements to the terms of their contracts, and restrictions on investors buying residential property. In the upcoming campaign, Sánchez will be able to point out that the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox voted against these initiatives.

PP and Vox have long called Sánchez’s cabinet illegitimate because of scandals and its reliance on Catalan and Basque nationalists. At the same time, the right in principle opposes direct state intervention in the housing market.

In recent months, Sánchez’s government has also faced corruption cases in the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), involving former senior figures Santos Cerdán and José Luis Ábalos. Former Spanish Prime Minister, socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, is also accused of having financially benefited from state aid to an airline; Zapatero denies this.

In addition, Sánchez’s cabinet is under pressure because of the crisis in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa, where more than 70,000 migrants suddenly arrived in July. Most of them have already returned to Morocco, but for the government Ceuta remains a political and logistical problem.

According to polls, housing remains the main source of concern for Spaniards, while the Socialists are trailing the People’s Party. On Saturday, around 50 marches in support of tenants took place across the country, including in Madrid, Valencia, and Barcelona, and on Monday Sánchez urged supporters to “mobilize” and achieve “a much larger, progressive majority”.

Sources

• Material: bbc.co.uk