The death of Maricarmen two weeks after being evicted has burst into the electoral pre-campaign of 29-N with very harsh accusations between left and right. One day after learning of his death at the Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid, the tension experienced yesterday in the streets has been transferred to the plenary sessions of City Councils and regional parliaments due to the request to carry out a minute of silence in his memory. The partisan war, filled with electoral strategy, has only just begun.
Maricarmen Abascal died late Wednesday at the Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid. She had been admitted for 14 days since the date on which she was evicted from the home in which she had lived for more than 70 years and nine days after an agreement was reached with the company that owned her apartment so that she could return to it maintaining a rent that did not exceed 30% of her pension. In those two weeks, the elderly woman put a face to a drama that thousands of vulnerable people face. A face that has already become an example of a dislocated housing market, which prevents hundreds of thousands of citizens from stabilizing a life project.
Maricarmen's death has been that and much more. Now, it has become an electoral campaign asset, the head of a political poster that everyone throws in each other's faces. Fuse of a fratricidal battle in which accusations of murder, torture, betrayal and also insults and threats are exchanged.
Just a few minutes after the Tenants' Union, the organization that supported her from the first moment, the one that defended her, the one that mobilized to help her, confirmed her death, the electoral machines started up. The ministers, the president of the Government, the leader of the opposition, the most fiery deputies rushed to react on social networks and added condolences for his death. The electoral aroma permeated everything.
The Government tries to mitigate the anger of the citizens - "guilty rentiers, responsible Government"; "the Housing Law is a chimera", "Where is the progressive Government? Accomplices" or Maricarmen's own accusation against Pedro Sánchez - with parliamentary tricks to approve two "patch" decrees, in the words of his ally, the PNV, overturned by the Plenary of Congress with the majority votes of PP, Vox, UPN and Junts who are also reproached for "turning their backs on the street", being "scavengers", working for the "vulture funds" and the "elites" for having voted against the government proposals.
Now, after the death of the old woman, the measures of the decrees are no longer discussed. The war has changed terrain and is purely partisan. The pre-campaign and the campaign should serve for the parties to explain and offer their proposals to begin to solve a problem that affects a large part of the citizens, especially young people, and, at the moment, they have not gotten off to a good start.
Today, just a few hours after the death of Maricarmen Abascal, the political entrenchment is confirmed. No trace of the possibility of understanding and consensus, just what is needed to honor her and all those who, before her, have suffered the drama. And above all, to start putting effective solutions on the table.
Anger in plenary sessions
This morning, in Madrid, the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, called PSOE and Más Madrid "miserable" and "scavengers" for "using" Maricarmen in a "sectarian and partisan" manner and told them that if they "respected" his memory they would have voted in favor of the two special housing plans that were approved this Thursday in the extraordinary plenary session.
"We are not going to take a step back, nor are we going to bow our heads, nor are we going to ask for forgiveness. We are going to beat them where we have to win in democracy, which is at the polls, which is where the people speak," the mayor said as a challenger.
In his turn to speak, a serious-looking Almeida thus addressed the spokespersons for Más Madrid and PSOE, Reyes Maroto and Rita Maestre, after they criticized the PP for not wanting to hold a minute of silence for the death of Maricarmen.
"I'm looking at your faces and I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed because today all of Spain and all of Madrid is crying for Maricarmen and you have long faces here and refuse to do a minute of silence," Maroto reproached. And Almeida, crudely, has replied that Maricarmen "is not a person who has suffered an eviction, it is an electoral strategy" and a "decoy to try to remain in power."
In Valencia, the Les Corts plenary session has observed a minute of silence in memory of Maricarmen, with the exception of the Vox group, which was absent from the chamber. At the beginning of the plenary session, the president of the Valencian chamber, Llanos Massó (Vox), explained that, at the request of the socialist parliamentary group, a minute of silence was going to be observed for the death of Maricarmen Abascal.
At that moment, the deputies of the three parliamentary groups present - PP, PSPV-PSOE and Compromís - and the entire Consell, which was in the chamber for the control session of the president of the Generalitat, stood up and remained silent for the woman whose eviction prompted the mobilizations and inspired the camps for the right to housing. Once the minute of silence was over, in which only the president of Les Corts was present on Vox's part, the rest of the parliamentarians from her group entered the chamber to attend the control session.
In the Cortes of Aragon, the parliamentary majority of PP and Vox has refused to observe the minute of silence. The Board of Spokespersons of the Cortes had met early in the morning to debate and vote on the proposal of the general secretary and parliamentary spokesperson of the PSOE, Pilar Alegría, to which CHA, Aragón-Teruel Existen and IU have joined, while PP and Vox have voted against, so the initiative has been rejected and has not been carried out.
From the PSOE they have pointed out that "Maricarmen has become a symbol of the housing problem." The PP responded by offering condolences for the death of the elderly woman, but justified their vote against by considering that this matter should not be raised to the institutional level, nor does it happen in other cases.
In the Madrid Assembly, the control session has also been a battle. The left blames the "vulture funds" and points to the Community for collaborating with them and not opposing the evictions. And the president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, responds by returning the boomerang: "there are vulture politicians and they are you," pointing to the representatives of the PSOE and Más Madrid. In the plenary session of the assembly there was no minute of silence at the start of the session.
Afterwards, the face to face between the president and the spokespersons of the opposition parties has been very tough: "Maricarmen was not going to die the same way," said the socialist Mar Espinar for whom the key is having suffered "the greed of the vulture funds." And Ayuso's reply: "Maricarmen blamed Pedro Sánchez. The law is socialist but it is Ayuso's fault?"
And then, Manuela Bergerot (Más Madrid), has demanded that Ayuso "wash her mouth to talk about Maricarmen" before warning that "there will be no peace in the streets of Madrid" in the face of "real estate harassment." The PP spokesperson, Carlos Díaz Pache; He even denounced these words as "physical threats."
