Spain’s snap general election campaign entered its final three weeks on Monday, with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez campaigning in Tarragona on Saturday, 7 November, as polls show the opposition well placed to end eight years of Socialist government. Spain will hold a general election on 29 November 2026 to elect all 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies and 209 of 267 seats in the Senate, with 176 seats needed for a majority.
Sanchez called the snap election on 5 October after Congress voted down both of his emergency housing decrees on 2 October, prompting him to dissolve parliament three days later. The government had spent the autumn facing mass housing protests nationwide, and the parliamentary defeat — the first decree by 178 votes to 172, the second by 184 to 166 — eliminated rent protections, anti-eviction measures and tourist-rental regulations in a single session.
Current polling suggests the opposition is well placed to capitalise on public dissatisfaction. The People’s Party (PP), led by Alberto Nunez Feijoo since 2022, polls at around 32%, while Vox, led by Santiago Abascal, attracts approximately 19%. Polling averages show the PP holding a lead of roughly six to seven points over the PSOE, with the PP and Vox projected to combine for a parliamentary majority — roughly 200 of 350 seats, well above the 176-seat threshold.
A binary choice, says Sanchez
Sanchez has framed 29 November as a binary choice between his progressive vision and what he characterises as regression under a PP-Vox alliance. “Hope will beat regression on November 29,” he has repeated at campaign events. If the PP and Vox win, it will be the first time since the death of dictator Francisco Franco that a far-right party has entered central government in Spain.
The PSOE enters the race burdened by the 24-year prison sentence handed in June 2026 to the party’s former secretary of organisation in the Koldo corruption case, and by a housing crisis that has fuelled mass street protests nationwide. The government’s emergency housing measures were defeated in parliament after Junts per Catalunya joined the PP and Vox in opposition, despite Housing Minister Isabel Rodriguez making a last-minute appeal from the floor, telling Junts that 90% of their demands had been incorporated into the texts.
One outlier poll, by SW Demoscopia for La Septima, placed the PSOE at 29.8% against the PP’s 29.1% — near statistical parity — but the broader average across multiple polling firms conducted through September and October showed the PP leading by approximately six to seven percentage points. The member parties of Sumar, except for Podemos, launched a new alliance, the Broad Front, with former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau replacing Yolanda Diaz as leading candidate.
The Urda shadow
The 2026 Urda train collision on 28 October led most parties but Vox to suspend their campaigns and prompted the resignation of Oscar Puente as minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility. The disaster, in the final week of October, dealt Sanchez a blow from which he has not recovered, according to analysts, and opposition parties have attributed it to infrastructure underinvestment during the PSOE government’s tenure.
Sanchez has led a fragile minority government since 2018, comprising the PSOE and the radical-left Sumar platform, involving progressive, communist and green parties. For the first time since 1977, a major left-wing alliance including the PSOE — the Senate of Progress — was formed for the upper chamber, prompting the PP and Vox to assess potential forms of electoral cooperation. Together with Vox, PP leader Feijoo pledged to carry out sweeping right-wing reforms, including on social issues and constitutional reform.
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