Class, the protests: Notes on the social explosion over housing in the Spanish state

by Juanjo Álvarez and Rául Camargo

We are pleased to republish this article, which focuses on uprising around housing and newly announced snap elections in the Spanish state, which was first published, in Castilian, in Viento Sur (a Marxist political journal in the Spanish state). It was first published and translated into English by International Viewpoint, the English language online magazine of the Fourth International.

On Friday, 2 October 2026, the first result of the event that has shaken politics in the Spanish state was staged, with the vote in Congress of the two Decrees that the government had launched to try to respond to the housing movement. Both texts were negotiated in a hurry and represented the attempt of the ruling PSOE party and its allies to make a final move in order to survive the cycle that, inevitably, will open from the next few weeks. 

The social tension that housing introduces into the lives of the majority has become political tension thanks to the successful intervention of the Tenants’ Union, the eviction of Maricarmen as a foundational event and the pressure in the street. Today, Spanish politics is inevitably moving towards another moment and the vote in Congress is a step in that transition.

A step, but not just any step. The struggle of the movement has taken politics to the streets and has forced manoeuvres in the institutions: from approval in the Council of Ministers to negotiations and parliamentary votes. The entire political body of the state has been shaken in these days and has not ceased to open avenues of struggle, which has been its best success, in view of the closure that the institutional path has found. A few days ago, even before the Council of Ministers began the legislative process that was frustrated yesterday, the movement had begun to launch the slogan of the general strike and to prepare demonstrations, in such a way that the pulse of the struggle would not wane with the failure of the government. This Saturday, 3 October, there have been demonstrations with hundreds of thousands of people throughout the state, and more than half a million in Madrid. The calls for social response are multiplying throughout the state with a force that does not diminish, but absorbs the collective anger at the institutional failure. We are in an unprecedented moment of political and social radicalism, where the masses accept and share the criticisms of the progressive government parties for their inaction and their hollow rhetoric.

The parliamentary forces, meanwhile, have moved along an expected line: the left has once again staked everything on a changing majority that, once again, has not managed to impose its proposals, and the right and extreme right repeat their old – and false – mantras about liberalisation and massive real estate construction. It is important to point out that these right-wingers, although they do adopt an incendiary tone and are close to occupying the Moncloa (the official residence and workplace of the prime minister of the Spanish state), have not yet fixed their messages and have undoubtedly lost their footing with respect to the situation of a few weeks ago, when the crisis in Ceuta was the central issue of national politics.

In this context, a particularly strong potential is the flexibility and openness shown in the Acampada de Sol (a housing protest encampment in the centre of Madrid) and that seem to be a mark of this new cycle of activation. Instead of the reactivity towards political organizations that the social movement has shown at other times, the impulse that is now opening up is open to relating to parties, no matter how left-wing they may be, and to discussing ideas of a total break with capitalism without prejudice. In this, the housing movement has been intelligent and agile in maintaining a flexible stance while avoiding attempts at co-optation by political forces, particularly those that make up the government. In this way, the starting signal for this new cycle emerges with a fresh potentiality around housing and a capacity to relate that will mark the emergence of a new militant generation.

The scenario is now opening up in a context that is difficult to interpret: on the one hand, it is clear that the phase of progressive governments that have fed fundamentally on fear of the far right is coming to an end, but we cannot yet know how a situation in which there are many elements will develop, starting with the electoral calendar. If Sánchez decides to go to general elections, the left of the government will try to swallow up the housing movement and feed on its momentum to alleviate the predicted electoral disaster, but it does not seem easy for them to succeed after showing their impotence with the negotiation of the decrees. It is foreseeable that the right will manage to form a government and that it will begin, as it did in 1996 and 2011, a period of intense regulatory activity that will mean a full-fledged attack on the popular classes.

We have to be clear: in a phase of defeat of the institutional left, we must not put palliatives to the parties that have formed the government, but recover the interests of the working classes and put them above the acronyms that have monopolized them during these years. The Sindicato de Inquilinas (Tenants’ Union) has been able to open a breach at a very complicated time, when the growth of the right seemed inevitable, and has done so with a radical line that activates the youth sectors. The pending task is to build new political-electoral experiences that must aim to restore the organizational links of the popular classes to achieve a structured social majority on all fronts, below and above. In this process, the electoral calls are moments of importance, insofar as they involve a condensation of political activity, but we must flee from the reduction of the political to the electoral and work every moment to achieve forms of organization that are not limited to the electoral terrain, but that aspire to form a broad pole of the class that fights in all spheres of the political. At the end of the day, volatile scenarios open up and what we seek is to build class strength that can take advantage of the rapidly changing times to make leaps, rapid advances towards political positions that benefit the majority.

3 October 2026

Translated by International Viewpoint from Viento Sur.