Symbolic imageSánchez calls snap election after housing decrees fail
Prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced a general election for 29 November on Monday. Parliament had rejected his government's two housing decrees three days earlier.
Sánchez was to dissolve parliament in an extraordinary cabinet meeting, FAZ reports, after the decrees failed on Friday, 2 October. Junts, the Catalan party of Carles Puigdemont, voted against them together with the conservative PP and the far-right Vox. In a televised address Sánchez asked for a "much larger progressive majority", admitted mistakes and said Spain must choose between joining the far-right wave and staying a bastion of social justice. Housing protests have continued since an 87-year-old woman was evicted in Madrid.
Polls favour the right
Surveys from before the vote put PP and Vox together at about 51 percent and the Socialists near 27, Handelsblatt reports. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo called the vote a choice between corruption and decency.
Corruption cases
Prosecutors are investigating people close to Sánchez. Sánchez's wife Begoña Gómez is due to stand trial and denies wrongdoing.
Amnesty ruling expected
Handelsblatt reports that the Constitutional Court is expected on Tuesday to rule on the 2024 amnesty law, which could lift Puigdemont's arrest warrant.