As the demonstrations took place, Sánchez remained out of sight, weighing his options. Emiliano García-Page, the Socialist president of Castilla-La Mancha, and the party’s leaders in Extremadura, the Basque Country and Castilla y León on Saturday urged Sánchez to call an early election, saying voters needed to be heard.
Meanwhile, the prospect of an imminent election is prompting Spain’s fractured left to scramble to regroup. With Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz declining to run for reelection, Health Minister Mónica García and Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun are seen as frontrunners to succeed her in the leadership of the Sumar party.
But Podemos leader Irene Montero is also positioning herself to lead a broader left-wing alliance. So, too, is longtime housing activist and former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, who has signaled a willingness to return to frontline politics at the head of a progressive coalition.
The center-right People’s Party leads in electoral polls with 34% support and is open to forming a government with the far-right Vox party, which is polling at 18%. Sánchez’s Socialists are backed by 26% of voters, and would need the fragmented left to unite behind a viable electoral alliance capable of winning enough seats in parliament to form a fresh coalition.
Spain’s housing protests have begun to spill beyond the country’s borders, with similar demonstrations held in Lisbon, Dublin, Potsdam and The Hague. The mobilizations reflect a bloc-wide crisis marked by the lack of affordable homes and governments under pressure to increase housing supply.