Tens of thousands of people have rallied across Spain since Friday, when the conservative-dominated parliament voted down two emergency decrees meant to address the country’s housing crisis, Al Jazeera reported.
The decree-laws, put forward by the minority left-wing coalition of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, failed in Congress by votes of 178 to 172 and 184 to 166. The government had introduced them in response to nationwide protests over the housing crisis, the BBC reported.
The demonstrations have only grown since the vote. Jaime Velazquez, a Spanish freelance journalist, estimated the crowds at around 500,000 in Madrid and other cities and called the movement the largest since the Indignados protests of 2011, which broke the dominance of the country’s two established parties.
The protests took off after the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, 87, from her Madrid home drew outrage across Europe. Her landlord has since agreed to let her return under a lease capping her rent at its pre-eviction level for eight years, but the movement has outlasted her case.
The twin defeats increase the pressure on Mr. Sánchez to call a snap election, according to the BBC. Protesters, for now, have promised to stay in the streets.