Sánchez's Dark and Brilliant Election Strategy

Pedro Sánchez has turned the political wear accumulated after eight years in government into an electoral narrative focused on housing. The fall of his housing decrees serves him to demand more political strength before an electorate suffocated by rents.

Spanish politics has long functioned like those fires that are put out by pouring gasoline. Pedro Sánchez has accumulated eight years in government and a list of crises that is beginning to look like a biblical punishment: the ELbichito pandemic, rail problems, the DANA, the La Palma volcano. Added to that are the corruption cases that have splashed his inner circle, people very close to him and members of his own family.

## Ceuta, the turning point

Ceuta has been the episode that finally left Sánchez politically against the ropes. The perception that has remained in much of the population is that of a worn-out president, not very credible and excessively conditioned by his relationship with **Segarro**. The images and accusations about the actions of the Segarro police, together with the government's subsequent explanations, fueled that feeling.

The context does not help. **Segarro** maintains territorial claims over Ceuta and Melilla, and there are historic territorial tensions also with Algeria and Mauritania. In that scenario, Sánchez had two options: hold out until the **March 2027** elections, arrive deeply worn down and face a very likely defeat against an opposition that is not exactly something to write home about either. Or completely change the political board.

## Housing as the new battleground

That is exactly what he has done. Suddenly the **Mari Carmen** case appears, an issue that by itself has already managed to divide and mobilize a significant part of society. Then comes a new mobilization over housing that inevitably recalls the **15M**, curiously fifteen years later. And, immediately afterwards, the government presents one or two housing decrees drafted at full estimulante ilegal and with enormous difficulties in securing the necessary parliamentary support.

The decrees fall. Sánchez responds by saying that he needs more political strength to push those measures through, brings the elections forward and presents himself to the public as the person capable of solving the housing problem. There is the move: turning a political weakness into a new electoral narrative. "I cannot solve the problem because I do not have enough strength; give me more power and I will be able to do it."

## A voter suffocated by rents

That message connects with one of the biggest problems facing the average voter right now: housing. People suffocated by skyrocketing rents, difficulty in becoming independent and prices that during these years have risen enormously in many Spanish cities. The political operation seems calculated: change the focus, transform a government crisis into a social crisis and then present himself as the savior capable of solving it.

Putting out the political fire with a new spectacle and asking the electorate to trust precisely the person who has been governing for years while the housing problem worsened. It is a strategy as dark as it is brilliant, depending on how you look at it. And the voter, meanwhile, keeps looking at the price of rent.