Pedro Sánchez has spent almost three years swearing he would see out the parliamentary term. He has said it over 30 times, in Congress, in interviews, and at press conferences. Last week, following a weekend retreat he sold as a period of reflection, he appeared at La Moncloa to dissolve Parliament and call a general election for 29 November. He did not explain why he had changed his mind. For some time now, the gap between what he says and what he does has ceased to be a problem for him. What has changed is the playing field, and it has changed so much that he had no other way out.
No prime minister who hopes to remain in power throws himself into a general election with the polls published last week. Those surveys already reflected the impact of the protests over Maricarmen’s eviction and, even so, gave the right-wing bloc over 50% of the vote. Even adding up the entire left and all the nationalists, the maths does not work out for him. His plan was a different one. He wanted to hold out until the summer of 2027, let his mayors and regional presidents take the punishment the voters were reserving for him in May, and then present himself with the blow already softened. Giving up ten months of the Falcon jet, the La Mareta residence, an RTVE at his service, and the tap of public spending is not something a man like him does lightly. If he has done it, it is because he sees in an early election the only crack through which a lucky trick shot might still slip.
Add to this Ceuta, where thousands of illegal immigrants remain in the city since the July border assault without the Government providing an adequate response
The underlying explanation lies not in housing, but in the courts. His former number two, José Luis Ábalos, has been convicted. So have his brother and his former Attorney General. In the Audiencia Nacional, Judge Moreno is pressing ahead with the case regarding the PSOE’s financing, and the party’s indictment seems to be a matter of time. Going into a general election with the party in the dock would have been suicide. Far better to do it now, with housing on the front pages and court summaries relegated to the inside pages. Add to this Ceuta, where thousands of illegal immigrants remain in the city since the July border assault without the Government providing an adequate response. The election campaign serves as a parenthesis. For seven weeks, the judges will try not to make a move so as not to interfere.
In this context, his intention to include Begoña Gómez on the electoral lists makes sense. His wife is awaiting trial before a lay jury. If she wins a seat, she will acquire parliamentary immunity, and her case will leave the ordinary courts for the Supreme Court. Sánchez will present this as an act of reparation against what he calls judicial and media harassment, but what is plain to see is something else: a seat being used as a legal shield. It is the clearest confirmation that this election has not been called to solve Spaniards’ problems, but rather those of the Prime Minister’s family.
He provided the second clue as to how he intends to play the game just this week. Congress voted down the so-called Maricarmen decrees, and the Government has approved them again to take them to the Permanent Deputation, where it commands a majority that does not depend on Junts. What the plenary rejected through the front door has now slipped in through the back. It may be legal, but it is disgraceful. In a parliamentary democracy, sovereignty resides in Parliament, and when Parliament says no, it means no. Sánchez knows the opposition will protest, and that is exactly what he is after.
The official campaign does not begin for another few weeks, but the real one is already underway, and on the harshest of terms
Maricarmen’s death this very week has added an emotional charge to all of this, which the Government has wasted no time in exploiting. Her case was uncovered and stirred up by the hard left, not the PSOE, but it is the PSOE that has turned it into a banner. What should lead one to ask why it is so difficult to access housing in Spain has been turned into electoral ammunition from day one. The official campaign does not begin for another few weeks, but the real one is already underway, and on the harshest of terms. Sánchez wants the streets full, banners, encampments in central squares, and a simple fairy tale of good guys and bad guys—the former being the citizens represented by him, and the latter the speculators represented by the opposition.
Sánchez has always presented himself as the antagonist to something. In 2015 and 2016, it was to Mariano Rajoy; in 2018, to the PP’s corruption; and in 2023, to fascism. Three years ago, the message was an easy sell: it was either him or the far right. Now he intends to convince Spaniards that if they are worried about housing, the solution also involves voting for him. The problem is that he has been in power for over eight years, and during that time, house prices have not stopped rising. His response has been limited to a lot of hot air, eviction extensions, and a housing law that has not added a single square metre to the supply and has created nothing but problems. With supply stagnant and demand soaring—partly due to the arrival of many immigrants—prices could only go up. Shining a giant spotlight on his biggest failure only makes sense if all the other options were even worse.
The other piece of the strategy lies to his left. The space that once belonged to Podemos and later to Sumar is now moving towards a new brand, Frente Amplio, with the same old faces. It is a change of name, not of names. That left is divided, confused, and in freefall, largely because the PSOE itself has stolen its rhetoric to compensate for the flight of moderate voters. Sánchez wants to finish the job and scoop up all of those votes. That is why he has jumped on the housing bandwagon before it loses momentum, and why his appearance on Monday sounded like a Podemos rally from their best days. The move has an obvious limit. Devouring your partners does not expand the bloc; it merely redistributes the same votes differently, and that bloc, altogether, falls short.
For the first time since 1977, a Government is ending a term without having presented a single draft Budget
Monday’s speech, delivered in an institutional setting that should not lend itself to such things, cleared up any doubts about the tone that awaits us. He complained of a hostile Congress in which many confuse compromising with giving up, and blocking with winning, oblivious to the fact that if this Congress could vote down his decrees, it was because he never had a majority. Voting against a law is not blocking democracy; it is exercising it. He also spoke of immensely powerful economic elites who do not stand in elections but want to control the country—a faceless, nameless figure that allows him to manufacture a moral enemy without having to prove anything. The funny thing is that these elites—if by such we mean the IBEX 35 companies and the big businessmen—have spent eight years keeping quiet, when they haven’t been outright accommodating towards him.
Rhetoric aside, the parliamentary term now drawing to a close will go down in history for an unprecedented fact. For the first time since 1977, a Government is ending a term without having presented a single draft Budget. The Constitution mandates doing so every year, and Sánchez has systematically flouted this. A Government that cannot get its decrees ratified, that has no budget, and that has to split a text in two to negotiate with itself is not running a country; it is negotiating its own survival.
None of this saves the opposition any work. Sánchez only moves with ease in conflict, and he will do everything possible to turn the campaign into a mud-slinging match. The worst thing Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal could do is accept that framing and get entangled in an exchange of insults and reproaches. Whether they like it or not, if the polls are right, they will have to come to an understanding in a few weeks’ time, and everything they say to each other now will be used against them later. The discontent is real. Housing, the cost of living, immigration, security, and the state of public services are worrying Spaniards, and the fact that Sánchez is not credible as a solution does not automatically make Feijóo the ideal replacement. He must prove it with a housing programme that involves building and not just regulating, with a firm commitment to judicial independence, and with a promise of stability that this parliamentary term has not seen.
On 29 November, the vote is not on two improvised decrees or on Begoña Gómez’s seat. It is a vote on eight years of government. In a democracy, nobody owns power; the citizens grant it, and the citizens take it away. Sánchez has handed the floor back to them late, reluctantly, and to save himself, but he has handed it back. Now it is their turn to decide whether they want another four years of permanent exceptionalism or if they prefer to verify something as simple as the fact that, in Spain, no Government is irreplaceable.
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