A tent city with named streets

Antonio Prieto, 36, is one of the volunteers who turn the steady stream of food donations arriving at Puerta del Sol into lunch for people there - the practical machinery behind a Madrid housing protest camp that now counts more than 1,200 tents in the central square. Sélpide San Luis, 26, has a shorthand for the pace of it: "We built a city in a week," she said.

• •San Luis said the camp has developed its own urban planning: the streets have names and surveillance systems are in place.
• •Her videos of day-to-day life at the encampment have attracted tens of thousands of views on social media.
• •The growing tent city draws visitors - some to snap photos, others to ask questions and some to provoke.

Juan Vázquez of the Housing Union of Carabanchel, a district in the south of Madrid, said the vast majority of visitors express support.

San Luis said the encampment has kept the media talking about housing, an issue campaigners had long tried to put on the agenda.

From one eviction to protests across Spain

Jorge Rubio, 27, put a figure on the pressure behind the protests: rooms for rent, he said, have jumped from €180 to €700 (£150 to £600) a month in six years. Across Spain, rents have surged 80% in a decade and housing costs by 63%.

The protests began with the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal, a wheelchair user who was carried on a stretcher from the home she had lived in for more than seven decades. Days of protests and encampments spread across Spain afterwards, and her case cast a spotlight on the intense competition for housing that pits local people against tourist lets, investment funds and short-term rentals.

The investment firm that bought Abascal's home has said she could return without paying the 230% rent hike it had reportedly demanded. Even so, the protests and encampments have continued to gain strength as people demand change.

A snap election with housing at its centre

The snap election announcement came in the week of 7 October 2026, and for the impromptu movement it marked another significant moment. Spain was not due to go to the polls until August 2027. Instead, the Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced the vote in response to rightwing parties torpedoing emergency legislation to tackle the housing crisis.

Polls suggest the most likely outcome is a rightwing coalition between the People's party and the far-right, anti-immigration Vox party. For Sánchez, the early vote is a high-stakes gamble, but the protests also give him a chance to keep his leftwing coalition in power.

Alicia del Río of the Madrid Tenants' Union said the power of the people has ushered in a new era - and that an election campaign is now beginning that will be deeply shaped by the housing issue.

'Now is the moment' - and the risks ahead

Prieto sees danger and promise in the timing. Bringing the elections forward is risky, he said, but there is also a feeling of "now is the moment". Had the movement waited until 2027, he argues, the right and far right would have crushed it; the momentum now focused on housing gives him hope. He is closely watching the parties to the left of the Socialists, hoping they unite in a broad front before the vote and start working on real solutions.

• •Del Río put a question to members of parliament: introduce the measures demanded by voters, or "continue to be the lackeys of the rentier economy".
• •Prieto called the protests a moral duty. "What we're seeing is a systematic violation of the constitution," he said - a charter that recognises a right to decent and adequate housing for all.
• •Vázquez said the rightwing directly attacks the working class, while Sánchez and his government have not gone after "the profits that speculative rentiers make from our misery". Organising the working class, he said, is the only means of looking after its interests.
• •Rubio's warning was blunt: "If you don't vote, the impact could be huge. You could end up without a place to live." "It's crazy. It's not viable. We're all affected by this," he added. Housing, in his view, is not only a Spanish but a European problem - and the revolution needs to reach the rest of Europe too.

Del Río has floated plans for a general strike in November. Vázquez called the coming weeks before people across Spain vote crucial: the energy must be channelled, he said, so that it does not "remain a footnote in a week-long encampment".