MADRID — Spain, a country that has spent the better part of a decade being told by its friends that housing is a solved problem, has finally achieved the clarity that Americans reached several generations ago: you cannot pass a law that makes a house appear.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a snap election for November 29 on Monday, days after Parliament rejected his emergency measures to address a housing shortage that everyone agrees exists and that no one in the room knows how to fix. The vote followed nationwide protests set off by the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman removed from the home she had lived in for more than seventy years, a detail that proved, once again, that the most powerful political force in the Western world is a grandmother with a lease.

The right voted against the measures. The left voted for them. Both sides then blamed each other for the eviction, which is the European equivalent of a town hall meeting, except with more plazas.

“Some say the housing crisis is a failure of regulation,” said Ignacio Ferrer, a housing economist who has written four books about the problem and lives in a flat he bought in 2004. “Others say it is a failure of the market. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in a third position: there are not enough houses, and everyone in the building is arguing about who caused the shortage while standing in the shortage.”

The irony is not lost on observers who have watched Spain’s progressive government champion tenant protections while the country’s home-building rate fell to levels not seen since the boom that caused the problem in the first place. The opposition, meanwhile, campaigned on the eviction of the 87-year-old woman while opposing the emergency measures that might, in theory, have prevented evictions, a position the opposition describes as “principled.”

"We have a housing crisis and a government that says the housing crisis is someone else's fault. This is, technically, a form of government."

Analysts note that Sánchez is betting his political future on the very anger his government failed to relieve, a strategy known in political science as “running on the wound.”

SPAIN'S HOUSING SITUATION, AT A GLANCE

  • The shortage: The Bank of Spain estimates a shortfall of roughly 750,000 homes, half of them in six provinces.
  • The eviction: One woman, 87 years old, seventy years in the same home, now the most consequential tenant in European history.
  • The vote: November 29, a date chosen, analysts say, because it is after the football season starts and people are angry.
  • The plan: None of the parties has proposed building 750,000 homes, because that would require building 750,000 homes.

At press time, the protesters in Madrid’s Sol square had reportedly begun demanding a solution, while the parties in Parliament had begun demanding that the protesters be more specific about which party they were angry at.