Spain's gambler PM Sanchez seeks to defy the odds again on a snap election

MADRID, Oct 5 - Spain's Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, on Monday lived up to his reputation as a political gambler by calling a snap election that surveys indicate will cost him his job and usher in a right-wing government.

But then, the 54-year-old has managed to remain in office for eight years without ever winning a majority in parliament.

His appetite for risk has led him to openly accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza, a charge it rejects, and to defy US President Donald Trump's demands that Madrid spend much more on defence and let the US use its airbases in Spain for its war on Iran.

His latest gamble - to bring the election forward to November 29 from next year - appears to be based on a calculation that anger over a mounting housing crisis will be directed more at his opponents than at his own party.

On Friday, his right-wing opponents blocked his attempt to answer protesters' anger over the eviction of 87-year-old tenant Maricarmen Abascal with a decree capping rents and blocking further evictions.

With thousands of activists camped in the capital outside the office of the Madrid regional government, led by the conservative People's Party, Sanchez could be trying to make the election a referendum on housing.

It could also shift the narrative from damaging headlines about his government's handling of a migrant crisis in Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta this summer, and investigations into alleged corruption in his party and influence peddling by his wife and brother. Anger still lingers, too, at an amnesty for Catalan separatists that allowed him to clinch a third term in 2023.

"Faced with an inability to legislate on the issue of greatest public concern, the aim is to capitalise on social mobilisation," said political analyst Eduardo Bayon.

"The logic is to transform a tangible problem into a choice between political blocs: 'This is what I am trying to do, but the right-wing parties are blocking me'."

Surveys indicate the housing measures rejected by the PP, Vox and the Catalan nationalists Junts have support across Spanish society. A 40dB survey for El Pais and Cadena Ser on Friday found that 68% of Spaniards, including a majority of PP and Vox voters, were in favour of capping rents to make housing more accessible.

"In contrast to their (opposition parties') penthouses, their budget cuts and their subservience to the elites, our pledge to the people is for affordable housing, public services and social rights," Sanchez wrote on X on Monday. "Spain must continue to move forward, and to do so, we need the public to strengthen our position in parliament."

Sanchez has defied the odds throughout his political career. He first grabbed power by leading a move to remove his conservative predecessor, Mariano Rajoy of the PP, in Spain's first successful no-confidence vote over corruption.

In two subsequent elections, he has mobilised his base by pitching himself as a progressive bulwark against the far right returning to power for the first time since the end of Francisco Franco's 36-year right-wing dictatorship in 1975.

In 2023, he called a snap election after the Socialists performed badly in local ballots. It paid off: With no political party prepared to endorse Vox, Sanchez cobbled together an eclectic alliance to back him for a third term, even though the PP had won the most seats.

Still, the chances of that happening look even slimmer than in 2023, with support for the Socialists and their minority coalition partners Sumar well below what it was then.

Sanchez could also be playing a long game, betting that, even if he does not win, he can wait in the wings as an effective opposition leader, said Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quiros, an economist and president of the consultancy Freemarket Corporate Intelligence.

Sanchez's Socialists are betting that, although a PP-Vox coalition government is now a possibility, it would be beset by policy conflicts, which has been the case in the four regional governments where the PP and Vox currently rule in coalition.

"It is a government that (the Socialists) believe will not last," Bernaldo de Quiros said. REUTERS