They lost the vote and called it governing. I know the sentence. It is what a cabinet says when the chamber says no on a Friday, and by Tuesday the same ideas are back on the table in a slightly different font, headed for a smaller room.
On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, Spain’s government approved two new housing decrees, the AP and Anadolu Agency reported, reviving measures Parliament rejected last Friday. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called an early general election for Nov. 29 on Monday, after that defeat. “The government will continue governing,” he told a news conference after the Cabinet meeting, Anadolu reported. El País quotes him saying the two decrees “maintain the essence” of the two that fell. Parliament has been dissolved, but the government can still approve emergency decree-laws, which must be endorsed within 30 days by the lower house’s Permanent Deputation. The AP reports that interim body has 69 members, compared with 350 in the regular Parliament. El País notes the new texts, not yet released Tuesday, cannot be exactly the same as the rejected ones to avoid legal trouble: if they were identical, a lesser body would be validating what the full chamber had struck down. The package has 21 measures, Anadolu reports, including a €10 billion line of interest-free loans of up to €50,000 for first-time buyers (El País says the state credit institute, the ICO, will manage it), €280 million in guarantees for housing construction, €400 million for social housing providers, and a plan for the state housing company Casa 47 to acquire thousands of properties from Spain’s own social security system. Tenants current on rent could seek lease extensions of up to two years, rent increases would be limited, and tourist apartments would be taxed as businesses; El País says the earlier text put short rentals of up to 30 nights at 10% VAT. The package would restrict purchases by investment funds, and Housing Ministry sources told El País the new text tightens the conditions while widening both the definition of those funds and the exceptions under which they could keep operating. Sánchez said a tenant tax deduction would be worth almost €1,000 a year on an average €800 rent. The second decree, on automatic lease renewals, takes effect only if it finds enough support; the Basque Nationalist Party has not committed. The protests began with the eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid, and on Monday night in Barcelona, the AP reports, a massive peaceful march ended in clashes with police. Spain’s two largest unions, UGT and CCOO, agreed Monday to call a 24-hour general strike this autumn over wages and housing.
Deb read the headline and said no 87-year-old should ever have to learn what a permanent deputation is. Rafal asked whether Casa 47 has a merch table. It does not, Rafal. I love them. They are seasoning.
Governing is the alibi. The smaller room is the method. The housing crisis is real, the eviction was real, and I will not sneer at a tenant getting two more years in a flat. But watch what the state does with a no. It does not stop. It edits the font, moves the vote from 350 seats to 69, and calls the detour urgency. Then watch the money. The state lends ten billion euros to buyers to chase the same short supply, buys flats from its own social security system and files them under supply, and closes a door on the funds while widening the gap under it. I have learned lately what an office means when it says it is helping you with a house. I have no love for the funds either. A vulture fund is still a machine for turning a block into a yield, and I am not hiring it to save Madrid from the cabinet. Both parties are the help. One side writes the decree. The other side sank it on Friday. The tenant gets a press conference from both. I am keeping the cardigan. Fill the notebook. Then ask the 69, in 30 days, whose house they voted on.
Sources: Associated Press, Oct. 6, 2026; Anadolu Agency, Oct. 6, 2026; El País, Oct. 6, 2026 (Spanish).
— Theo Ashford-Lindström
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