CCOO and UGT have agreed to call a 24-hour general strike over wages and access to housing. The action is planned for autumn, following Spain’s announcement of an early election and before the official campaign begins, the unions say.
CCOO and UGT decided on 5 October to call a 24-hour general strike over wages and access to housing, bringing the dispute into Spain’s election period. The election is set for 29 November, and the unions plan the stoppage for autumn, before the official campaign begins on 13 November. Their governing bodies still need to approve the date.
Neither union has called a nationwide general strike during Pedro Sánchez’s coalition government. Their leaders say the immediate issue is the lack of affordable housing, while presenting the action as a political chance for the left.
UGT secretary-general Unai Sordo said the contest was still open and argued that the left had an chance.
The timing has drawn a sharp response. Business groups and opposition parties call the strike an electoral intervention; the unions say it concerns living and working conditions.
Yolanda Díaz has called for mobilisation and backed the strike from inside the government, giving the action a direct political edge. The claim that no serving Labour minister had previously supported a general strike remains unverified.
CEOE has questioned the stoppage’s legality. Its legal team is considering whether to challenge the action once its demands and arrangements are clear.
Housing is the stated trigger, with wages also at issue. The unions point to the failure of collective wage bargaining and want a new AENC structure with pay rises of between 4% and 7%, along with mechanisms to revise wages if inflation accelerates.
CCOO and UGT are negotiating with the Sindicato de Inquilinas and other civic organisations, extending the mobilisation beyond the usual union structure. They have also linked it to the failure of two government housing decrees in Congress, arguing that the parliamentary defeats showed the need for fresh measures on housing affordability and wages.
Several figures cited in the wider debate need further confirmation. Claims of a shortfall of 750,000 homes and inflation of 9.5% remain unverified. Transport and energy infrastructure, along with water, also feature in the broader cost-of-living argument, while precarious work remains an issue behind fixed-discontinuous contracts.
The coalition government refused to deflate personal income tax despite pressure on household budgets. Claims that this pushed tax revenue up by 58% since 2018, or by more than 116 billion euros, need to be checked against official budget and tax data; these figures are not established facts.
CCOO and UGT are acting in the final stretch of the mandate. They have received substantially more public funding under Sánchez than under the previous conservative government.
Claims that the unions received 115 million euros since Sánchez came to power, excluding money linked to training, need confirmation from official subsidy records. The funding has become part of the political argument around the strike.
Between 2013 and 2018, the Labour Ministry led by Fátima Báñez allocated 62 million euros to the unions. Under Yolanda Díaz, annual subsidies reportedly began rising in 2021 and reached 32 million euros in 2025. Those figures have not been independently established and cannot be treated as proven explanations for the timing of the strike.
Union influence has weakened even as public funding increased. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, put union density at about 12.5% at the start of the decade, down from 18.3% in 2009.
Other groups have gained ground in the public debate. The Sindicato de Inquilinas has become highly visible during the housing protests.
Madrid’s turnout dispute reflected tensions over housing, with government officials and organisers giving sharply different crowd estimates in Madrid's turnout dispute.
The new strike brings the major unions into that pressure, turning a social grievance into an electoral confrontation.
PP spokesperson Ester Muñoz called the strike a "trampantojo". She accused the left of using union power to influence the ballot through confrontation.
Vox spokesperson Pepa Millán described CCOO and UGT as subsidised forces mobilised by Moncloa to create disorder. Both parties have said a PP and Vox government could cut union subsidies towards the levels of the Rajoy era.
CEOE and CEPYME dispute the labour basis of the action. They argue that housing demands are directed mainly at legislation and budget decisions, not employers.
CEOE president Antonio Garamendi called the strike political and said it could be unlawful. The government’s position is more sympathetic: Pedro Sánchez said he respected the constitutional right to strike over an issue affecting many workers, including access to housing.
CCOO and UGT together have almost two million members and around 230,000 union delegates, giving the dispute more weight than a symbolic protest.
El País reported that the two unions had not previously called a nationwide general strike during Sánchez’s tenure. ABC described the planned action as the first such strike in Spain in 14 years.
The date remains undecided. The unions say the stoppage will take place before the official campaign begins on 13 November, putting housing and wages at the centre of the election calendar.
