Crash in housing policy: After a defeat for Prime Minister Sánchez, Spain is likely facing new elections.

Landslide in Housing Policy: After a defeat for Prime Minister Sánchez, Spain is likely to face new elections The government loses the vote in parliament on its package of measures to combat the housing crisis. The protest movement wants to break up its camp, but wants to expand the demonstrations. The Prime Minister's appeal relied on drama: "Do the right thing, or history will judge you faster and harder than you think," Pedro Sánchez told the members of the Spanish Parliament. This Friday afternoon, the vote on two decrees for the housing market was pending. The 350 parliamentarians voted individually – and rejected the decrees in the majority. 172 votes yes and 178 votes no on the first decree, 166 votes yes and 184 votes no on the second. The political Madrid assumes that Sánchez will now call for an early parliamentary election. At the latest, he would have to call the polls in the summer of 2027 anyway. The protest on the streets is expected to continue It was a turbulent day in Madrid – in Congress and in front of its entrance. The demonstrators came from the central Puerta del Sol, where they had set up their tents in protest against the housing situation just a week earlier for the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal. They only had to walk 200 meters. Around 500 police officers protected the parliament building, and the anger over the voting result was therefore expressed only in slogans and leaflets thrown by some visitors on the spectator stands. However, the tension is expected to increase in the coming days on the streets. As the Madrid tenants' union announced after the vote, they wanted to break up the tents at Puerta del Sol on Saturday – but only to expand the protests to the neighborhoods: "To the general strike." There is certainly no societal majority that wants to take such radical steps. However, the housing market worries the Spaniards more than any other, as shown by polls for years. An end to the minority government of Socialist Sánchez on this issue would be more consistent. They had suffered several voting defeats in recent years. But whoever does not get a majority for such a central issue in such a polarized situation can hardly claim the legitimacy of governing. Sánchez is likely to fall over social issues A certain irony lies in this development. Not the corruption scandals that the opposition repeatedly blamed, the deals with Catalan separatism that they harshly criticized, or the handling of the migration crisis in the enclave of Ceuta that brought Sánchez to the brink – but an issue from the social sphere and thus the area where his cabinet was actually strongest. However, Sánchez has never achieved comparable successes in housing policy as with the minimum wage or labor law. Especially in the last legislative period, when he had a parliamentary majority with various left-wing parties, it remained a major failure. A law from 2023 that was supposed to set certain limits on the liberal rental market was not implemented by most regions. The package, patched together in the wake of outrage over the Maricarmen case, contained mainly transitional regulations regarding evictions, rent increases, tax relief, and large investment funds in the first decree. The second part wanted to extend rental contracts in Spain, which are limited by existing practice. But the votes of the Left and various regional parties were not even enough to approve the first decree. The government's proponents were the seven deputies of the Catalan Junts party, whom Sánchez had helped into government three years earlier. In return, they received an amnesty for the leaders of the forbidden independence referendum of 2017. After various legal delays, the return of their leader Carles Puigdemont to Spain is imminent, and Junts signaled a general willingness to compromise on housing market reform during the week. But late Thursday evening, the liberal-conservative party expressed its rejection. The Sánchez package creates legal uncertainty and disadvantages owners, for example in the case of illegal squatings. The right wing promises new housing The right-wing opposition parties PP and Vox also argued similarly, which have been on a course of fundamental opposition for years. "The problem is solved by building housing," explained PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo after the parliamentary session. He will ensure that as soon as Sánchez complies with the demand for an early parliamentary election: "I am ready." The necessary incentives will not be easy to achieve. Increases in material prices, lack of skilled workers, bureaucratic hurdles, space problems in urban centers, and a certain caution due to the real estate bubble of the noughties are among the reasons why less is built in Spain than before. At the same time, the population grew by about three million people through immigration in the last decade, and more and more housing was converted for tourists, so the pressure on the market grew enormously. Purchase and rental prices almost doubled during this period. The polls before the start of the "Maricarmen" crisis predicted a majority for the next parliamentary election for PP and Vox. But according to a current survey by the 40db Institute, even a majority of their supporters demand more regulation in the housing market. Sánchez has likely found his campaign issue in this. As he already threatened the Congress, he will try to keep the veto from the right parties from Friday for many times.