Spain housing protests follow parliament's rejection of two government decrees

Spain's parliament rejected two housing decrees put forward by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's government on Friday 2 October 2026. On Saturday 3 October, protests over housing took place in Madrid and other Spanish cities. The BBC, the Guardian and Al Jazeera cite about 50 marches or cities.

Sánchez leads a minority coalition of his Socialist party and Sumar. The conservative People's Party (PP), the far-right Vox and the Catalan pro-independence party Junts opposed both decrees. According to the BBC, MPs rejected the first by 178 votes to 172 and the second by 184 to 166. The reports do not include a party-by-party breakdown.

The decrees included a suspension of evictions until 2030, which the BBC says applied to vulnerable tenants. According to the BBC, they also covered lease extensions, higher taxes on tourist apartments, a restriction on residential purchases by investment funds, and automatic renewal of rental contracts.

The protest movement was triggered by the eviction in September of an 87-year-old woman, named by the BBC and the Guardian as Maricarmen Abascal, after a rent increase she could not afford. According to the Guardian, she put the increase at 230%. The BBC reports that Urbagestión, the company that owns the flat, negotiated her return on a low rent after the backlash.

In Valencia, protesters and police clashed and police used rubber bullets, a detail the BBC attributes to Spanish media. The Guardian and Al Jazeera report that police also used tear gas, and that about 30 protesters entered the City of Arts and Sciences before being removed. Nine officers were injured and five people arrested, according to public broadcaster RTVE as cited by the BBC. The reports do not describe any injuries among protesters. The Guardian and Al Jazeera say protests elsewhere were peaceful.

Protesters have been camping in central Madrid for days.

What is disputed

The size of the protest. According to the BBC, the city's Tenants' Union put participation in the Madrid demonstration at 500,000, while government officials put the figure at 70,000. The Guardian gives the same two figures, attributing them to organisers and authorities, without specifying a location.

What each side says

• The Madrid Tenants' Union says the measures were insufficient, but that their rejection "exacerbates the housing crisis which is costing the working class their lives", according to the BBC. It is calling for a general strike.
• The Guardian quoted PP lawmaker Juan Bravo as saying: "Housing doesn’t become more affordable through decrees; it becomes more affordable by building more homes".
• Al Jazeera quoted PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo as urging Sánchez to "call elections as soon as possible".
• Junts argued the decrees would tighten the housing market, according to Al Jazeera.
• The government is not quoted in the reports reviewed by Vocemundi; the Guardian describes its decrees as including measures "aimed at improving access to housing".

Spanish media reported that Sánchez would watch the strength of the protests before deciding whether to call an early election, according to the Guardian and Al Jazeera. His office did not comment, Al Jazeera says. The reports do not include a government reaction to the vote or the protests.

Analysis

The defeat of both decrees shows the limits of a minority coalition that needs outside votes to pass legislation. Several paths are possible: the government could seek a revised text acceptable to other parties, leave the measures aside, or, as unnamed Spanish media have reported, consider an early election. None of these is confirmed. The strike call has no date or formal status in the reports reviewed by Vocemundi, so its weight is unclear. The parties disagree on remedy as much as on politics: regulation of rents and investors on one side, more construction on the other. Disputed turnout figures make the protests' scale hard to assess.

Produced by the Vocemundi newsroom with AI assistance.