Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced a general election in Spain for Sunday 29 November.
We are currently updating this report.
Sánchez’s announcement followed a weekend of consultations with ministers and senior figures in his Socialist Party (PSOE) over the future of the government. He had cancelled the rest of his Monday schedule and arranged a televised statement from La Moncloa at 9am, fuelling expectations that he would call an early general election.
Ahead of his address, many within the government and PSOE had regarded a snap election as the likely outcome, with widespread support among socialist ranks for dissolving parliament and taking the country to the polls as soon as possible.
The immediate trigger was the government’s defeat in Congress on Friday, when MPs rejected both of its emergency housing decrees. ALSO READ: Spain’s housing decrees defeated as pressure grows on Sánchez to call snap election.
The measures had been drawn up in response to protests following the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from her home in Madrid. Despite negotiations in which the government had incorporated some proposals from the Catalan pro-independence party Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), the party voted against both decrees alongside the right-wing opposition People’s Party (PP) and far-right Vox. Their combined opposition defeated the measures and intensified pressure on Sánchez to decide whether he could continue governing with his existing parliamentary support. ALSO READ: Spain’s housing protests intensify as tenants’ unions push for general strike.
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