Spain's Sanchez gambles on snap election amid housing protests

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called an early election for November 29 on Monday, in a bid to strengthen his mandate after a fragmented parliament rejected the government's key housing decrees last week amid widespread protests.

The snap vote is a high-stakes gamble for Sanchez, whose Socialist Party trails in nearly every opinion poll. 

An electoral defeat would spell the end of one of Europe's last few left-leaning governments at a time when the far right is making unprecedented gains across the region as a growing swathe of European voters desert the center ground.

However, Sanchez, a wily political operator, has proven time and again his ability to surprise those who had long written him off.

"We need to renew people's support," Sanchez said in a televised address. "We need to mobilise and win a much larger progressive majority in parliament, one that will allow us to overcome vested interests, deliver new social advances and continue transforming Spain."

The premier acknowledged having made mistakes and falling short of campaign promises. "I also know that part of that social majority is dissatisfied today," he said, but vowed to fight for Spain to remain "a bastion of openness, social justice and environmental responsibility".

The leader of Spain's main opposition party, Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, urged voters to reject the current center-left coalition government and usher in his conservative People's Party (PP) in an upcoming snap election.

"The question I put to voters is whether they want four more years of what we've been living through, or whether they want to give change a chance," he said in a televised address after Sanchez's announcement.

The conservatives have been calling on Sanchez to dissolve parliament and call early elections for most of the current legislature.

Spain's blue-chip index, the IBEX 35, was flat after the announcement, while Spanish government bonds were broadly steady.

Progressive and wily leader

Sanchez has stood out globally for taking a strong stance on progressive issues from Palestinian statehood to defending multilateral institutions and cracking down on "tech oligarchs", even as a series of setbacks and scandals weakened his position at home.

Recently, he has been boosted by proposals to tackle a mounting housing crisis that were well received but were struck down by right-wing lawmakers on Friday, leading to massive protests by housing activists across the country.

Polls suggest a coalition led by PP with the support of Vox is the most likely outcome in Spain, ushering a far-right party into central government for the first time since the return of democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco.

Still, despite never winning enough votes to form a majority government, Sanchez has cobbled together a series of fragile and seemingly impossible coalitions including voices from the far-left to the separatist right to remain in power for three successive terms lasting eight years.

But growing fragmentation among his partners has meant the government has passed little in the way of legislation in its third term and failed to pass a budget since 2023, even as Spain's economy has continued to be one of the best performing in the developed world.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal warned the election result would be unpredictable despite favourable polling for the right. "Surveys said the same thing in 2023 and Sanchez managed to form a majority with all his accomplices," he told TV channel Antena 3.

Rival ousted

Sanchez took office after leading a move to oust center-right Mariano Rajoy in the wake of major corruption scandals within Rajoy's PP. However, senior members of Sanchez's own Socialists have in the past year faced allegations of graft, dragging down the party's already weak approval rating which has hovered at around 26-31% throughout his tenure.

Against the odds, he won a second four-year term in office in 2023 despite heavy losses in earlier regional and local elections by negotiating support from a loose alliance of parties in parliament.

That was achieved after promising a highly controversial amnesty for pro-independence Catalan leaders in exchange for their support, a move still bitterly remembered by many voters as a betrayal of Spanish unity.

Sanchez won early plaudits for moves including the exhumation of Franco from a mausoleum the dictator built for himself outside Madrid, and the reform of a labor law that has seen unemployment fall to its lowest level in almost two decades.

As other European countries have toughened their policies towards foreign arrivals, Sanchez has consistently argued that immigration is essential for sustaining Spanish growth by plugging gaps in key sectors such as construction, agriculture and hospitality and for providing revenue to prop up Spain's strained welfare system.

More recently, his refusal to agree to US-led demands to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP while pivoting toward China has rattled US President Donald Trump.

Sanchez's housing measures provided a rare chance for the Socialist leader to pitch himself as the leader of a mobilized left and distract from the more politically damaging issues of the migrant crisis in Ceuta and corruption scandals.