Maricarmen's 'altar' from her street mysteriously disappears and in a matter of hours

Where is the Maricarmen altar? “, thought this morning at seven in the morning one of the neighbors of Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman who ignited the fight against evictions in Spain and who today is a symbol of the popular clamor that demands decent housing for people.

The night before, in front of the portal where Maricarmen had lived for the last seven decades before being taken from her home on a stretcher, several candles were still lit in a small outdoor shrine that a group of people spontaneously built as a tribute to the old woman shortly after learning of her death, a little over a week ago.

“They removed it at dawn. This morning I found it dismantled," this neighbor described to EL PAÍS. After finding the sidewalks clear, this woman took out her cell phone and took some photos.

It is unknown who may have removed all those candles, flowers, decorations and messages that made up that kind of altar.

From the Tenants' Union, which fought with Maricarmen to be able to remain in her house until her death and who this morning were surprised with the news, they warn: “Those of us who have accompanied Maricarmen for the last seven years are not going to allow her memory to be destroyed in this way. They can try to destroy an altar and some candles, but they know that they are incapable of erasing everything that Maricarmen has planted," they say.

"The violence of rentism is exercised everywhere, from Congress to the streets, but Maricarmen's legacy is indelible, she told us "fight for what is yours" and that is what we are going to do, until housing is out of the market and becomes a right for all."

Maricarmen's death has generated a social commotion. A few hours after signing an agreement to return to her home at number 47 Alcalde Sainz de Baranda Street in Madrid with the Urba Gestión fund, which promoted the purchase of her house and promoted her expulsion, the elderly woman died at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital.

As soon as the news was heard, the protesters who championed their struggle and who decided to keep it alive by camping in Puerta del Sol, remained silent and a group of them went to the door of their portal to light those candles and leave those messages in their memory, which remained there until last night.

“Thank you for changing Spain,” said one of them. At two in the morning that night, 154 candles had already been lit.