Spain dissolves its Cortes for a 29 November election, then re-enacts the rejected housing decrees

Spain will vote on 29 November. Royal Decree 806/2026, dated 5 October and published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 6 October, dissolves the Congress of Deputies and the Senate elected on 23 July 2023 and calls elections to both chambers. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the step in a televised address on 5 October after the Congress plenary refused to confirm his government's emergency housing measures. Al Jazeera reported him saying that "we need to renew people's support" and acknowledging that "part of that social majority is dissatisfied today". The turn came the next day. Rather than leave the rejected measures dead, the caretaker Council of Ministers approved them again as two royal decree-laws, published on 7 October and already in force, which a dissolved parliament must now confirm or kill.

What the dissolution decree actually fixes

The decree is short and operative. It is issued under Article 115 of the Constitution and the General Electoral Law, Organic Law 5/1985 of 19 June, on the proposal of the Prime Minister and after deliberation by the Council of Ministers on 5 October. Article 1 dissolves both chambers. Article 2 sets the election for Sunday 29 November 2026. Article 4 fixes a fifteen-day campaign, from 00:00 on Friday 13 November to 24:00 on Friday 27 November. Article 5 convenes the resulting chambers in constitutive session on 23 December at ten o'clock. The final provision brings the decree into force on the day of publication. It is signed by King Felipe VI and countersigned by Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón.

The dates are not discretionary. Article 42.1 of the General Electoral Law requires the decree of convocation to be published at least fifty-four days before polling day. Publication on 6 October and a vote on 29 November is exactly that interval, so the government took the earliest date the statute allows rather than the latest. The annex redistributes Congress seats: Madrid rises to 38 deputies and Cádiz falls to eight, while Barcelona holds 32, Valencia 16, Seville and Alicante 12 each, Málaga 11 and Murcia ten. Senate arithmetic is unchanged, with four senators per mainland province, three each in Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Tenerife, one each in the smaller island constituencies, and two each for Ceuta and Melilla.

Decrees in force, with no chamber to confirm them

On 6 October the outgoing cabinet approved Real Decreto-ley 28/2026 and Real Decreto-ley 29/2026, both published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 7 October. The first reinforces the stability of habitual-residence tenancies. It sets a minimum initial term of five years, or seven where the landlord is a legal person, with automatic renewal for periods of the same length unless notice is given: six months by the landlord and two by the tenant. A landlord who declines to renew must compensate the tenant with the greater of twelve monthly payments calculated on the state reference rent index or one monthly payment per year of residence. It enters into force on 15 November, two weeks before the election.

The second decree is the broader instrument. It suspends eviction proceedings against vulnerable persons without alternative housing until 31 December 2030, caps annual rent updates at 2 per cent through 31 December 2027 where no price index applies, and defines affordable housing as costing no more than 30 per cent of the median household income in the municipality. On the financing side it creates a Social Impact Housing Fund with an extraordinary credit of 400 million euros, an ICO guarantee line of up to 2 billion euros for promoters of social and affordable rental housing, and the TU CASA programme of interest-free loans covering the lesser of 20 per cent of a home's value or 50,000 euros over up to thirty years. It came into force on 8 October.

The preamble to Real Decreto-ley 28/2026 records that the Congress plenary derogated the earlier urgent housing decrees, and Real Decreto-ley 27/2026 in particular, and that the government is reissuing the regulation with adjustments because the Article 86 conditions still hold. The preamble dates that plenary derogation to 29 September 2026, while Euronews and Al Jazeera both placed the decisive Congress vote on Friday 2 October. The two accounts do not agree on the day.

The constraint: a standing committee, not an electorate

Article 86.2 of the Constitution is explicit: decree-laws "deberán ser inmediatamente sometidos a debate y votación de totalidad al Congreso de los Diputados, convocado al efecto si no estuviere reunido, en el plazo de los treinta días siguientes a su promulgación". Dissolution does not suspend that clock. Article 78.2 provides that each chamber's Deputation Permanent, chaired by its president, assumes the powers of the chamber under Articles 86 and 116 where the chamber has been dissolved or its mandate has expired. Article 78.1 fixes a minimum of twenty-one members, allocated to parliamentary groups in proportion to their numerical strength.

That is the mechanism worth noting. The confirmation vote on both decrees falls due in early November, inside the campaign, and it will be taken by a committee that reproduces the balance of the Congress elected in July 2023, the same balance that has already struck the measures down once. If the Deputation Permanent repeats that, the eviction suspension to 2030 and the 2 per cent rent cap lapse weeks before polling day. If it does not meet in time, the decrees fall by operation of the thirty-day limit. Either way the measures govern tenancies, courts and the ICO guarantee lines in the interval.

The wider effect is a stopped legislature. No budget can be passed and no defence appropriation amended until the chambers are constituted on 23 December, and a government can be invested only after that. Euronews reported on 6 October that a conservative government would be likely to prioritise higher defence spending and tighter migration policy. Al Jazeera reported that polls favour a People's Party-led administration relying on Vox, that average rents have nearly doubled over the past decade while house prices have risen around 90 per cent, and that more than 70,000 people protested in Madrid after the televised eviction of an 87-year-old resident.

Sources

• Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto 806/2026, de 5 de octubre, de disolución del Congreso de los Diputados y del Senado y de convocatoria de elecciones
• Boletín Oficial del Estado — Sumario del BOE núm. 248, martes 6 de octubre de 2026
• Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto-ley 28/2026, de 6 de octubre, medidas urgentes para reforzar la estabilidad de los contratos de arrendamiento de vivienda habitual
• Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto-ley 29/2026, de 6 de octubre, medidas urgentes para la protección de la función social de la vivienda y la ampliación de la oferta de vivienda asequible
• Boletín Oficial del Estado — Sumario del BOE núm. 249, miércoles 7 de octubre de 2026
• Boletín Oficial del Estado — Constitución Española, artículos 78 y 86
• Boletín Oficial del Estado — Ley Orgánica 5/1985, de 19 de junio, del Régimen Electoral General, artículo 42
• Al Jazeera — Spain's Pedro Sanchez announces snap election amid housing crisis
• Euronews — Spain's Sánchez calls snap election for 29 November after housing defeat
• Euronews — With Pedro Sánchez at the helm, Spain's socialist stronghold is cracking