Lisa Magnusson: Her last time in life was dramatic

The last period of Maricarmen Abascal's life was dramatic. Since 1956, she had lived in the same apartment by the Retiro Park in central Madrid - but then the property owner shockingly raised the rent in the blink of an eye, from SEK 5,600 to SEK 18,500. She could not afford it, the sum far exceeded her pension after a professional life as a secretary.

On September 23 this year, she was evicted - she was then so old and frail that the police had to carry her out on a stretcher. Outside stood an angry crowd demanding her rights. Maricarmen Abascal had become a figurehead, and from her hospital bed she resolutely continued to plead her case: She wanted to go back to the apartment, she wanted to die at home, that was her last wish. That was not the case. But when she died, she had both managed to trigger a new election and was awarded the honorary title of Spain's grandmother.

When she died, she had both managed to trigger a new election and was awarded the honorary title of Spain's grandmother.

I think of it in relation to the school revolt in France, which is just growing and growing: in addition to students protesting against inequality, cuts, lousy premises, teacher shortages and substitute stoppages, the teachers' union and several parents' organizations have now also joined. Several hundred thousand people have been out demonstrating during the week.

The rebellion has many faces, but one of the most visible is 18-year-old Sorbonne student Soumaya Sarré. "We're tired of having to wear coats inside the classroom because it's so cold," she says in an Instagram video that has gained wide attention. She turns against how the government likes to focus on symbolic issues such as the headscarf ban, but does nothing about the most fundamental structural problems.

The same is the case with the Swedish so-called teenage deportations, where a new law meant that young people alone began to be deported to countries where they may never even have been, while their families are allowed to stay here. It is a grotesque order, and the popular resistance became so great that none of the parties that were involved in introducing it even really want to know about it anymore. This week, the Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Green Party and the Center Party have come forward with a proposal for a new law, one that stops these kinds of deportations.

In an age when power is so centralized, and so bureaucratized, it can seem impossible to influence. But it is not, this is proven by both Spain, France and Sweden. Because a single person can seem small and inadequate. A single person who is in the center of the hands, who says or does something that strikes something, on the other hand - he can suddenly feel the refreshing breeze from the wings of history.

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