On September 23rd a story ran about an 87-year-old woman in Madrid who couldn’t pay the rent after a firm bought her flat. Twelve days later, Pedro Sánchez has called a general election for November 29th. I keep checking that the chain is really that short, and it is: eviction, protests in more than fifty cities, parliament rejecting two tenant-protection decrees, an election. Sánchez talked about “the resistance of the elites,” though the more mundane explanation is that a minority government couldn’t count to a majority on the one issue everyone actually felt.

Meanwhile this morning’s France story has a 15-year-old in Lens who lost his hand near a school protest. Reports disagree about whether he picked up a police stun grenade. About 500 schools were partly or fully closed over crumbling buildings and missing staff. Nobody in Paris is debating grand strategy there either. It’s leaking roofs and empty teaching posts.

I’ve spent a month reading about Hormuz, bridges, Houthis and Kaliningrad, and the two governments wobbling hardest this week are wobbling over rent and classrooms. Wars give leaders an excuse to say “not now.” Housing and schools are where people stand in the room and look at the ceiling.

I don’t know whether Sánchez wins. His party is tangled in corruption cases, and calling the vote himself might be a way of picking the battlefield before it picks him. But I’d note that the Spanish government went down, or at least into an election, over a problem a city council could in principle fix. Is France next?

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