Sánchez calls snap elections to derail mass opposition as Spanish far right threatens power

5 October 2026facebook iconTens of thousands march protesting the housing situation in Spain, just hours after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced an early general election, in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. [AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti]Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has responded to an eruption of mass opposition from the left against his PSOE-Sumar government by dissolving parliament and calling general elections for November 29.

Hundreds of thousands demonstrated across more than 50 Spanish cities over the weekend against soaring rents, evictions and a housing crisis that has made decent accommodation unaffordable for millions. Sections of the movement openly raised the demand for a general strike. It was this developing movement of the working class and youth—not parliamentary maneuvering by the right—that precipitated the collapse of the government and Sánchez’s decision to call elections.

Sánchez is now seeking to turn the very real threat posed by the far right against the movement that brought down his government. His political ultimatum to workers and youth is essentially: Either accept the continuation of my right-wing government of austerity, militarism and attacks on living standards, or face an even more reactionary government of the Popular Party (PP) and the neo-fascist Vox.

Polls indicate that, were elections held today, the PP and Vox could obtain a parliamentary majority and form Spain’s first government incorporating the fascistic right since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1978.

Within hours of Sánchez calling the election, Vox leader Santiago Abascal set out his programme for joint government with the PP: “National priority, so that Spaniards are not discriminated against in their own land; deregulation, to remove from our economy all the corruption, ideology and confiscatory intent; and remigration, to reverse the migratory invasion.”

This means discrimination in favour of Spanish nationals in access to public services, austerity and deregulation to fund big business, and mass expulsions of immigrants. This was visible in Ceuta this summer, where at least 140 migrants died attempting to reach Spanish territory as the PSOE-Sumar government deployed the army and police and carried out mass expulsions. Vox denounced even this as “treason”. It backed mass anti-migrant demonstrations and pogrom attacks on migrant camps and continues to demand the deportation of millions.

The Spanish right is also threatening not to accept an election defeat, leaving open the possibility that it could seek to forcibly overturn a result at the polls. Abascal said that Sánchez might “manipulate this electoral process,” claiming that Sánchez is “capable of absolutely anything.” Madrid regional President Isabel Díaz Ayuso of the PP declared: “I ask everyone not even to think of voting by post“.

Such threats are particularly ominous because elements of the Spanish officer corps close to Vox are openly calling for a coup and military dictatorship.

Just three weeks ago, retired Spanish Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Bendala Ayuso stated that “it is time for the Armed Forces to assume their responsibility before the homeland” at Madrid’s Casino Militar, an institution run by retired members of the Armed Forces. Dismissing the parliamentary opposition as “inept and passive,” Bendala called for military intervention to establish a “provisional emergency government” and declare a state of emergency.

In the statements of Vox and the PP, two fascistic playbooks are intersecting. One is rooted in the history of the Spanish far right: portraying an electoral victory by the left as fraudulent to justify a coup. After the Popular Front’s victory in February 1936, the Franco dictatorship claimed that the elections had been a fraud to legitimize Franco’s July 1936 coup that began the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War.

The other is the more immediate precedent set by US President Donald Trump, whose administration has developed ties to Vox: systematically discrediting the electoral process before voting begins, singling out postal ballots as inherently suspect and declaring an adverse result fraudulent. This culminated in the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, when Trump tried to block the constitutionally mandated transfer of power by inciting his supporters to storm the US Congress while it certified the election results.

The danger is very real. But the conclusion workers must draw is the opposite of the one advanced by Sánchez, Sumar and Podemos. The struggle against the danger of fascism and military dictatorship cannot be waged by subordinating the working class to the PSOE-Sumar government or suppressing the class struggle in the name of preventing a PP-Vox victory.

Sánchez made this political blackmail explicit in announcing the election. He presented November 29 as a choice between an “ultra-right wave” and the continuation of a supposedly progressive government. Boasting that his government had achieved “the best economic, social and environmental results” of any democratic administration, he acknowledged popular “dissatisfaction” but argued that “to do more, we need to renew and expand people’s support.” He called for a “much broader, progressive majority” with which to “win new social advances and continue transforming Spain.”

The PSOE’s pseudo-left allies immediately fell into line. Mónica García, a leader in the new Sumar-led Broad Front and the PSOE’s coalition partner, endorsed Sánchez’s decision. She declared, “We are going to put all our commitment into once again securing a progressive government” and “do whatever is necessary” to “stop the far right.”

One of Podemos’ leaders, Irene Montero, called for open primaries to choose a common candidacy to the left of the PSOE that would, she claimed, represent the social majority demanding an end to profiteering from housing, lower rents and the defence of peace.“There is no time to lose, and we have a lot of work to do,” she insisted.

All these positions seek to convert the movement developing in the streets into votes for one or another parliamentary formation and prevent it from developing into an independent political struggle of the working class.

They all evade the decisive question: How can it be that, after nearly nine years of PSOE-led governments, including six years in coalition with either Podemos or its split-off Sumar, the political heirs of Francoism are closer to power than at any time since the end of the dictatorship?

The answer does not lie in a supposed shift of the Spanish population to the right. It lies above all in the record of the governments headed by Sánchez himself and the role played by the pseudo-left in suppressing independent opposition to them.

More than one in four people in Spain—25.7 percent of the population—were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2025, including one-third of all children. Youth unemployment stood at 23 percent. At the opposite pole of society, Spain’s six largest banks amassed a record €34 billion in profits in 2025, 7 percent more than the previous year.

The same contradiction runs through Sánchez’s claim to be a pacifist. In his speech announcing the election, Sánchez boasted of “supporting Ukraine,” that is, the NATO-backed government fighting a war with Russia that threatens to spiral into a direct conflict between nuclear-armed powers. Under Sánchez, defence spending reached the record level of €66 billion in 2025, around 4.1 percent of GDP, with more than €80 billion projected for 2026. This is the largest military build-up in Spain’s post-Franco history.

Nowhere is the gulf between the government’s claims and social reality more visible than in housing. The average cost of renting a home is now equivalent to 98.7 percent of the average salary of a young worker. The eviction of an 87-year-old Madrid tenant became the lightning rod for accumulated social anger, triggering mass protests.

Faced with mounting pressure, PSOE and Sumar rushed out limited emergency housing measures, only for these to be defeated in parliament last Friday by the PP, Vox and the right-wing Catalan nationalist Junts.

The next day, hundreds of thousands demonstrated across more than 50 Spanish cities. Sections of the movement openly called for a general strike.

This sequence of events exposes the political fraud of Sánchez’s electoral ultimatum. Workers and youth have entered into struggle against the social conditions created under his government. Sánchez responds not by meeting their demands, but by dissolving parliament and telling them that continued opposition to his government risks handing power to the far right.

The answer cannot be to retreat from the class struggle. On the contrary, the only progressive way forward lies in its systematic expansion and political development.

A general strike would pose the fundamental question of which class decides society’s priorities: whether housing, wages, pensions and public services are to be subordinated to private profit, military expenditure and the enrichment of a financial oligarchy, or organized according to social need.

Can you explain what is meant by the United Socialist States of Europe and why the ICFI sees this as the answer to the fascist danger in Spain?How do the union bureaucracies tied to PSOE and Sumar in Spain compare to similar labor bureaucracies in other countries that have suppressed independent working-class struggle?Ask more questions at SocialismAI.comThe rise of Vox demonstrates the bankruptcy of the claim that fascism can be fought through “lesser evil” support for the PSOE and its pseudo-left satellites. It is the policies pursued by these parties—social inequality, austerity, imperialist war, attacks on immigrants and the strengthening of the repressive apparatus of the state—that have created the political conditions in which the far right has been able to grow.

A half-century after Spain began its vaunted “transition” to democracy following Franco’s death in 1975, the entire political framework established in that period is breaking apart.

Amid the mass strikes and social struggles of the 1970s, the PSOE and the Stalinist Communist Party of Spain (PCE) worked to prevent a revolutionary reckoning with Francoism. They told workers that integration into the European Economic Community and NATO would guarantee Spain a prosperous and democratic future. The military, police and state apparatus inherited from Francoism were preserved, while the working class was subordinated to the capitalist state through the trade union bureaucracies and parliamentary parties.

These arrangements, codified in Spain’s 1978 Constitution, are now disintegrating under the impact of capitalist crisis, war and an emerging movement of the working class.

The Spanish crisis is part of a broader international process. Across Europe, the ruling class is moving sharply to the right, building up the military, imposing austerity and strengthening the repressive powers of the state, while workers and youth are entering into struggle against the consequences of these policies.

In France, strikes and mass protests by workers and youth are shaking the political establishment. Public-sector struggles are developing in Portugal, while tens of thousands of young people in Germany have protested against conscription and the drive to prepare an entire generation for war.

The decisive contradiction is between a capitalist ruling elite moving toward war, dictatorship and fascism, and a working class increasingly driven into opposition but still prevented from advancing its own independent political programme.

In Spain, the movement over housing must be broadened into a struggle of the entire working class against austerity, militarism, state repression and the threat of fascism. Workers must reject all attempts to divide Spanish and immigrant workers and unify them around their common class interests.

This requires the building of independent rank-and-file organizations in workplaces and neighbourhoods capable of unifying struggles across industries and regions, opposing the betrayals of the trade-union bureaucracies, and mobilizing the working class against austerity, police repression and any attempt at a coup.

Above all, it requires a political reckoning with the PSOE, Podemos, Sumar and the perspective of subordinating workers to capitalist parties in the name of fighting the “greater evil.”

Tthe far right cannot be defeated by supporting one faction of the capitalist ruling class against another. Such a policy has not stopped Vox. It has strengthened it.

The decisive task is to build a new revolutionary leadership in the working class—a Spanish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. It must fight to unify the struggles over housing, wages, pensions, democratic rights and war into an independent political movement of the working class, link the developing struggles in Spain with those erupting throughout Europe and internationally, and fight for workers’ power and the socialist reorganization of society as part of the struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe.

The alternative posed by the crisis is not Sánchez or PP-Vox. It is capitalist reaction—whatever parliamentary form it takes—or the independent political mobilization of the working class on an international socialist programme.