(CNN) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap general election for April 28.

Sánchez made the announcement at a press conference in Madrid on Friday, saying: "I have informed the King. I will dissolve Congress and call for elections for the 28th of April."

The announcement comes two days after his Socialist government suffered a defeat in Parliament after failing to get its 2019 budget passed.

Spain's electorate is also set to vote in a series of local and European elections in May.

A busy electoral year follows on from December 2018 regional elections in the southern province of Andalucia, in which the far-right Vox party unexpectedly won 12 seats.</s>MADRID — A center-left government has fallen. The two-party system has collapsed. The far-right is on the rise. At first glance, Spain seems a lot like other parts of Europe these days. And it is.

But the decision on Friday by Spain’s Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to call for an early general election in April — the country’s third since late 2015 — is also an echo of deeper, particularly Spanish dynamics at play.

A secessionist drive in the prosperous northern region of Catalonia has challenged both the country’s territorial integrity and the core arrangements of the 1978 Constitution for Spain, one of Western Europe’s youngest democracies.

The result is the rise of a new nationalism across Spain, which in many ways has yet to fully reconcile the divisions left by the darkest chapters of its recent past, including dictatorship and civil war.</s>Spain's prime minister on Friday called a snap general election and revealed the date as April 28, paving the way for the beginning of campaigning.

Pedro Sánchez, 46, of the Socialist Party, said he was asking for parliament to dissolve and for the elections to be held one month ahead of regional elections in the country.</s>Pedro Sánchez has led a fragile minority government since becoming prime minister in June CHEMA MOYA/EPA

Spain will go to the polls in April for its third general election in four years after its Socialist government failed to pass the national budget this week.

Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister who came to power only eight months ago, announced the snap election today for April 28.

“Between two options — not doing anything and continuing without a budget or giving Spaniards their say — I choose the second,” he said. “Spain needs to keep advancing, progressing with tolerance, respect, moderation and common sense.”

Mr Sánchez, 46, has led a fragile minority government since becoming prime minister in June, with the Socialists holding only 84 of the 350 seats in parliament. His party relied on the support of Basque and Catalan nationalist parties…</s>MADRID (AP) — Spain’s Socialist prime minister calls general election for April 28, country’s third in less than four years.</s>MADRID — Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain on Friday called for a snap general election in April, opening a new chapter of national turmoil as the territorial conflict over Catalonia continues to weigh on the country’s politics.

The announcement from Mr. Sánchez came two days after his minority Socialist government suffered a major defeat in Parliament, when opposition lawmakers banded together with Mr. Sánchez’s erstwhile Catalan allies to reject his budget plan.

Mr. Sánchez unexpectedly took office in June, but he was in a weakened state from the start because his Socialist Party held less than one quarter of the seats in Parliament.

His ascension was more a reflection of frustration with his predecessor, Mariano Rajoy, than an endorsement of his Socialists.</s>MADRID — Spain will go to the polls on April 28, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced on Friday.

"Spain must keep going forward," the Socialist leader said in a statement, defending the legacy of his eight-month-old administration, which will become the shortest in Spain's modern democratic history. It will be the third time Spaniards have to choose a new national parliament since December 2015.

Sánchez's decision to call a vote in April came two days after Congress rejected his 2019 budget plan, with Catalan pro-independence lawmakers joining forces with the right-of-center opposition.

"The future of our country is at stake," Sánchez said.

Addressing the situation in Catalonia, the Spanish leader accused the right-wing opposition of willing "to perpetuate the political and territorial crisis of our country."

"I will never give up on dialogue," Sánchez said, defending his controversial approach to talks with the pro-independence Catalan government. "Within the Constitution, [we can talk about] everything; outside the Constitution, about nothing," he added.

Sánchez seized power in June via a motion of no confidence in his conservative predecessor Mariano Rajoy. He has since led a fragile minority government, with his Socialists commanding just 84 seats in the 350-member Congress.

The electoral test will come barely a month before European, regional and local elections on May 26 and coincides with the trial of 12 Catalan pro-independence leaders, which began this week and is expected to last for months.

Spain has been plagued by political instability since December 2015, when the emergence of two new parties — the center-right Ciudadanos and far-left Podemos — upset the traditional two-party system.

Polls now predict the political landscape will split further with the rise of far-right Vox party.

An average of polls for El País had the Socialist Party in the lead with 24.4 percent and the PP second with 20.7 percent. Ciudadanos was third with 18 percent, Podemos and its allies fourth with 15 percent, and Vox fifth with 10.6 percent.

Read this next: US averts government shutdown as Trump prepares national emergency</s>The Spanish President Pedro Sánchez has called general elections on April 28. The announcement has come after the Government’s defeat to approve the General State Budgets last Wednesday when the Congress rejected the so-called "more social budgets" of recent years. Apart from the political consequences, the budget’s rejection raises an economic problem since it will be very difficult for Spain to meet its deficit reduction target from now on.

Weeks ago, the Government in minority warned that in case of not gathering enough support to carry out the 2019 budgets, it would call elections. Since then, Pedro Sánchez has conducted endless conversations with different political groups. Given that the conservative Popular Party and the liberal right-wing party Ciudadanos opposed the budgets from the beginning, Sánchez's goal was to get the support of the parties that voted in favor of the motion of censure that took place last summer, removing Mariano Rajoy from La Moncloa (the Spanish Presidential House) and making Sánchez the new President.

First, Sánchez reached an agreement with the anti-austerity party Podemos to support the budgets in exchange for increased social spending, more days of paternity leave, regulating the rental price and reducing the electricity bill, among other measures. However, Sánchez also needed the support of the Catalan separatist parties, which asked Sanchez for concessions regarding the current negotiations to deal with the territorial crisis in Catalonia (this week began the trial of 12 Catalan separatist leaders in Madrid who are facing 25 years in jail for the illegal referendum and declaration of independence). In the end, both parties did not reach an agreement and the separatists' parties (PDeCAT and ERC) voted, along with the right-wing parties, against the General State Budgets.

Before moving forward, it is important to clarify that there will not be a budget vacuum in Spain, as in these cases it is foreseen that the budget of the previous year will be automatically extended. Having said that, there is an increasing concern regarding the economic implications of the rejection of the General State Budget. The reason is that some of the main spending measures adopted by the Government are already committed and will continue regardless of the general elections’ result, while the main income measures, collected in the failed 2019 budgets, will not see the light of day.

Between the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, the Government rushed to approve a package of economic measures by decrees (a special power of the Executive to pass legislation without having to go through the validation of the Congress), including an increase of the minimum retirement pension between 1.6% and 3%, an increase of the civil servants’ salary of 2.25%, plus the outstanding increase of 22% of the minimum wage up to €900 ($1,030) per month. All these measures aimed to remain in force despite the outcome of the budget, and so it will be.

This is good news for many Spaniards since an important part of the population, especially the most precarious workers and the pensioners with fewer resources, get to maintain their income increase. The problem is that in order to sustain the proposed budget (with a significant social expenditure) and the measures approved by decree, the Government had to increase some of the current taxes (such as the income tax for the highest incomes, the minimum payment of corporate tax for large companies, and the price of diesel) and introduce new ones, like the ‘Google tax’ and the ‘Tobin tax’.

The Government had planned to collect €5.6 billion ($6.21 billion) thanks to the rise and creation of the new taxes. However, after the budget refusal, the increasing tax measures will remain dead letters. As for the new taxes like the ‘Google tax’ and the ‘Tobin tax’, although they do not depend on the budget, they are draft bills. This means that Congress will probably not have enough time to pass them since the procedure last around three months and elections will take place before that. As a result, the approximately €2 billion ($2.26 billion) that Sánchez’s Administration planned to collect with the two new taxes will vanish too.

In short, despite the increase in expenses for 2019, there will be lower revenues than expected and therefore, Spain will most probably not meet its deficit reduction target despite the country’s economic growth. During her speech in the General State Budget debate in the Congress last Wednesday, the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero indicated that the public deficit could rise to 2.2% or 2.4% of GDP, which is an important increase compared to the current target of 1.3% of GDP.

It goes without saying that the new deficit adjustment provision will not be celebrated in Brussels. The European Commission had already requested the Spanish Government for a clarification regarding the proposed budget last November. The Executive of the EU was concerned about public debt and deficit, although the Spanish Government managed to convince the institution about the balance of the budgets.

However, those who are most affected by the rejection of the General State Budgets are the Spaniards as a whole. After years of austerity (since the economic crisis of 2008), these budgets meant to raise the social spending to 57%, to increase the infrastructures funds to 40%, to provide additional funds to fight gender violence, child poverty and youth unemployment, to reduce university fees and increase scholarships and R+D+i, to invest in public housing and rentals for young people, to increase the period of paternity leave from five to eight weeks…and so on. In other words, Spanish citizens will pay for the inability (and in some cases lack of will) of some of their political representatives to reach an agreement in favor of the general interest.

"Spain must continue to progress, excluding the politics of tension, creating quality employment, expanding rights and freedoms, and guaranteeing social protection. I am convinced that it is possible to recover the 'useful policy', that it is possible to recover tolerance and respect," has said Sánchez during the announcement of the early elections, during which he has been very critical of the opposition's political blockade. "Spain belongs to its citizens, and they must decide whether to take a step back," he has concluded.</s>MADRID, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday called a snap national election for April 28, after losing a key budget vote.

“Between doing nothing and continuing without the budget and calling on Spaniards to have their say, I choose the second. Spain needs to keep advancing, progressing with tolerance, respect, moderation and common sense,” Sanchez said in a televised address to the nation following a cabinet meeting.

“I have proposed to dissolve parliament and call elections for April 28th.”</s>Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday called a snap national election for April 28th, potentially spelling months of uncertainty in the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy, where the political landscape is increasingly fragmented.

Sánchez called the election after parliament voted down his minority government’s budget bill.

“Between doing nothing and continuing without the budget and calling on Spaniards to have their say, I choose the second. Spain needs to keep advancing, progressing with tolerance, respect, moderation and common sense,” Sánchez said in a televised address to the nation following a cabinet meeting.

“I have proposed to dissolve parliament and call elections for April 28th.”

The demise of his socialist government comes after just over eight months in office.

Opinion polls show that no single party would win enough votes to govern on its own, with possible coalition scenarios pointing to lengthy negotiations between three or more parties - potentially including the far-right Vox.

Sánchez took office in June and had since been leading a government that depended on the votes of small regional parties to pass legislation.

He was thrown against the ropes this week when Catalan nationalist parties, at a time of heightened tension over an independence drive by their region, deserted to help defeat the fiscal bill.

Sánchez’s socialists are leading in polls, with estimates from the last few months averaging at 24 per cent, according to a poll of polls by daily El Pais.

But the conservative’s People Party (PP) and centre-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) would not be far behind and could theoretically form a coalition with Vox, as they did in the Andalusia region in December.

But Ciudadanos might baulk at teaming up with the far-right nationally, preferring instead a three-way alliance with the Socialists and anti-austerity Podemos.

Markets were little changed after Sánchez’s announcement.

Bond markets analysts have said any political impact on sentiment should be short lived given the country’s decent macro-economic outlook. – Reuters
Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez calls for a snap general election on 28 April and will dissolve the Cortes Generales on 5 March after failing to approve a government budget.