Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced the dissolution of parliament and early general elections for 29 November 2026. He made the announcement on Monday in a statement from the Moncloa Palace, after the Congress of Deputies rejected two government decrees on housing.
Sánchez said he had first informed King Felipe VI and called an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers to dissolve the Cortes Generales. The election, he said, will be held on Sunday, 29 November, within the timetable set by electoral law: 54 days must pass between publication of the dissolution decree and polling day. The next election had been due in the summer of 2027.
The trigger was Friday’s vote on 2 October. The lower house refused to back two decrees drawn up by the minority government amid the housing crisis. The first suspended evictions of vulnerable tenants until the end of 2030, extended by two years leases expiring before 2028, raised taxes on tourist flats and restricted purchases of housing by investment funds. The second introduced automatic renewal of rental contracts — a demand of tenants’ groups. The People’s Party, the far-right Vox and the Catalan party Junts voted against them; without Junts, the coalition of the Socialists and Sumar had no majority.
Sánchez, who has led the government since 2018, said “the moment has come for Spanish men and women to decide what future they want,” and called for renewed public support to push through reforms and build a broader progressive majority in parliament. He acknowledged that the cabinet had failed to meet all its goals, including housing affordability. People’s Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo had already demanded an early election before the announcement, arguing that the government had support neither in the streets nor in parliament.
