Faced with the housing crisis and the mobilization which has continued for more than a week in Spain, the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez presented two texts to MPs on Friday, who rejected them. A new day of demonstrations is planned for Saturday.

Published on: 02/10/2026 - 12:42 Modified on: 02/10/2026 - 21:41

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“What a shame!” After the rejection, on Friday October 2, by Spanish deputies, of two texts presented by the government of Pedro Sanchez to try to stem the housing crisis, demonstrators present outside the Congress of Deputies in Madrid shouted their discontent.

They called for a "general strike", on the eve of new demonstrations which had already been announced across the country for Saturday.

After the vote, the Minister of Social Rights Pablo Bustinduy castigated the parties having rejected these texts, which according to him were "seriously mistaken". “They will pay for it at the ballot box,” he predicted.

These successive rejections are a significant setback for Pedro Sanchez, who is up against the wall a few months before the legislative elections scheduled for 2027. The Spanish Prime Minister had nevertheless done everything to obtain a favorable vote, despite the absence of a parliamentary majority for his camp.

“Forget political calculations for a moment,” he urged during a brief surprise speech from the perch, just before the first vote in mid-afternoon.

“I ask you to have courage” and “to be up to the task,” demanded the socialist leader, hated by the right-wing and far-right opposition who voted against the government's two decree-laws, in addition to the deputies of the Catalan independence party Junts, formerly allies of Pedro Sanchez.

In recent hours, Junts, whose votes had allowed Pedro Sanchez to win the nomination in 2023, had asked the executive to withdraw them and develop new texts, without being heard.

Among the demonstrators present in Madrid, disappointment and anger predominated, according to an AFP journalist.

“We kind of saw it coming, but hey, even if we expect it, we still have to fight…”, David Llamas, a 26-year-old young man who still lives with his parents because of “too high” rent prices, tried to motivate himself.

The two texts presented Tuesday by the executive notably provided for the automatic renewal of rental contracts when they expire, as well as measures to restrict the evictions of vulnerable tenants. They also targeted "vulture funds", defined as groups acquiring real estate at low prices in order to maximize their profitability.

Deficit of 700,000 housing units

This new parliamentary setback is already fueling speculation about possible early elections, a hypothesis that Pedro Sanchez has until now always ruled out, while the next election must take place no later than the summer of 2027.

“The sooner the elections take place, the better,” said Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party, the third political party in the country, on Friday.

The leader of the Popular Party (right), Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, for his part called for elections as quickly as possible, deeming it "inadmissible to use the housing problem to maneuver for electoral purposes". “We cannot continue (like this),” he said.

Affordable housing has been one of the main social problems in Spain for years, but protests grew massively after the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal. The 87-year-old woman was evicted from the apartment she had lived in for seven decades, an event that sparked a wave of national outrage.

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Housing rights activists have since set up protest camps in central Madrid and other cities, and made the octogenarian the face of the housing crisis.

According to the Bank of Spain, the country, where some 50 million people live, has a deficit of around 700,000 homes.

With AFP

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