Spain’s socialist prime minister calls snap election after housing defeat, amid Ceuta crisis
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is seeking a stronger parliamentary majority as opponents focus on corruption allegations and his handling of the Ceuta migrant crisis.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Oct. 5 that he would dissolve the parliament and call a general election for Nov. 29, following a defeat on emergency housing legislation and amid criticism of his Socialist-led government’s handling of the migrant crisis in Ceuta, a Spanish territory on North Africa’s coast bordering Morocco.
Sánchez’s announcement came three days after the parliament rejected two emergency housing decrees Oct. 2 aimed at reducing evictions and real estate speculation.
In his Oct. 5 televised address to the nation, Sánchez said he had informed King Felipe VI and would convene an extraordinary Cabinet meeting to dissolve parliament and call the election. He blamed opposition parties for blocking his agenda and argued that he needed a broader progressive majority to carry out further reforms.
“In order to undertake in depth the pending reforms that we need so that citizens can reduce these levels of inequality, we must mobilize and ensure that Parliament gives us a much larger, progressive majority, with which to bend the elites, conquer new social advances, and continue transforming Spain,” he said, according to an unofficial translation of the speech’s transcript.
The election will come roughly eight months earlier than originally planned.
AP News reported that Sánchez, who has served as prime minister since 2018, hopes to capitalize on a surge of public frustration over housing. If his “gamble backfires,” the vote could instead pave the way for a government led by the conservative Popular Party in coalition with Vox, a nationalist party that advocates stricter immigration enforcement, the outlet reported.
The Popular Party is expected to campaign on corruption allegations and Sánchez’s response to the Ceuta crisis, AP News reported.
Shortly after Sánchez’s announcement, Vox leader Santiago Abascal urged voters to cast their ballots in person rather than by mail. According to an unofficial translation, Abascal said he does not “trust anything Pedro Sánchez might do.”
Ceuta has faced sustained pressure since more than 72,000 migrants flooded the city from Morocco in late July. Most subsequently returned, but at least 10,000 remained as of Oct. 4, fueling tensions and straining local resources in a territory with about 80,000 residents, according to Reuters. The government subsequently authorized the use of several state-owned locations for migrant housing.
On Oct. 4, police cleared a camp on Trampolín Beach where about 3,000 migrants had been living in tents and makeshift shelters for two months. Authorities moved them to temporary accommodation for processing or return to Morocco, an Interior Ministry spokesman told Reuters. Residents held demonstrations the previous day to demand that the migrants leave.
Comments