Sánchez weighs early election as November 29 enters the frame

Sánchez takes hours to decide: November 29 is now being floated

Pedro Sánchez has not called a general election. Nor has he said he won't. Between those two silences lies either a full parliamentary term or a single weekend. Spain's Congress voted down the government's two housing decrees, and the prime minister, with no speech scheduled, asked for the floor at the end of the debate to deliver a line that works like a countdown: "History will judge them, sooner than they think and more forcefully than they imagine." His inner circle says he will spend the coming hours "analysing what peine" and gauging "how society reacts", with no public engagements over the weekend.

November 29 and the 54 days that make it possible

For polling stations to open on Sunday, November 29, the election would have to be published in the BOE (Spain's official state gazette) next Tuesday. That is the 54 days' notice the law requires, and the deadline turns the hypothesis into a clock-watching exercise: any day of delay pushes the vote further out.

The official horizon was different. The natural end of the term points to the summer of next year, and until now March was the earliest date being mooted. The collapse of the decrees and the idea that the blow might rally the left have brought November 29 into play as a possible date.

From Constitution Day to Palm Sunday

If there is no immediate snap election, the awkward dates being discussed are: December 6, Constitution Day and right in the middle of the Immaculate Conception long weekend; December 25, Christmas Day; January 1; January 8, with the holidays just over; March 21, Palm Sunday; and March 28, Easter Sunday.

The precedent rules nothing out. The last general election was called in late July, right as the summer holidays began. Anyone expecting deference to voters is in the wrong country.

Junts sinks the decrees and leaves the term gasping

Sánchez tried twice in 24 hours. On Thursday, at the La Toja Forum, he urged Carles Puigdemont "out of pure humanity" not to reject the decrees. He said it before Junts' leadership met, and past ten that night the party announced it would vote no. On Friday, in the chamber, came the second and final appeal. It changed nothing: the decrees were doomed.

The consequence is more political than legal. The government's parliamentary weakness is on full display, along with the sense that the term is effectively over ahead of time.

A term with no budgets and the ballot box as a threat

Three lines of thought circulate in the analysis. One holds there will be no early election: that Sánchez will hold out until the last day, partly because much of the matter is in the courts' hands and an election would amount to shooting himself in the foot. Another reads that analysis as theatre designed to pressure Junts and pin the blame for the disaster on it. A third expects an imminent announcement.

The detail that comes up most is not electoral but budgetary: according to one participant, the government has not presented annual budgets since the term began, an anomaly that in any other democracy would be the story of the year. With no budgets and no majority, the only lever left is the calendar.

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On this evidence, a decision within days seems reasonable. But don't swear to it: if there is no snap election, the term will drag on until the summer with the same air of caretaker government that surrounds it today.