Spain Unions Crash Election Campaign, Calling a General Strike

Spain’s biggest labor unions are set to call a general strike for Nov. 11 to focus attention on housing just before campaigning begins for an election scheduled for Nov. 29.

The first such protest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2012 marks a response to the opposition-led parliament’s defeat of a bill intended to bolster housing affordability. The loss prompted Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to call the snap vote.

“I share the demands of the strike,” Justice Minister Félix Bolaños said Wednesday in an interview. “There is a broad consensus in Spanish society that the housing market is not working. What measures are the right and the far right putting in place? Nothing.”

The opposition says the protests are part of a strategy to mobilize voters and influence the election. “There have been more than enough reasons to demonstrate in defense of workers’ rights, and they haven’t done so,” said Jaime de los Santos, a spokesman for the People’s Party. “It is an eminently political decision intended to benefit Pedro Sánchez’s political agenda.”

The unions, which will ratify the strike date in votes late Wednesday, are demanding intervention in the housing market to curb prices as well as wage increases after pay gains lagged far behind housing costs.

Home purchase prices rose 12.9% in 2025 and rents increased 8.5%, far outpacing both overall inflation and wages, which rose slightly more than 3%.