Hundreds of people spent the night from Saturday to Sunday in an ultra-tourist square in Madrid to demand better protections for tenants, after the eviction during the week of an octogenarian, who has become a face symbol of the housing crisis in Spain.
Sunday morning, around a hundred tents were concentrated on a large half of the surface of the very vast Puerta del Sol, just in front of the headquarters of the Madrid region, noted an AFP photographer.
Most of the “campers” who spent the night there, after a demonstration which brought together thousands of people in the streets of Madrid on Saturday, are still sleeping, even if some organizers are starting to prepare coffee, in a tent in the middle of the group. On the square, revelers are returning from their Saturday evening, tourists are pulling their suitcases towards the metro. The police presence is minimal.
Already in 2011, the Puerta del Sol was occupied for three weeks, at the initiative of the Indignados movement, young demonstrators frustrated by gloomy economic prospects and corruption, in the years of recession which followed the financial crisis of 2008.
On Wednesday, the images of Maricarmen Abascal, 87, evacuated on a stretcher from her Madrid apartment on Wednesday, after the police forced her door, had the effect of an electric shock in the country and put the housing crisis in Spain back in the spotlight, with the approach of the legislative elections scheduled for 2027. “We can't take it anymore. Either the rental system collapses or the government falls,” summarized the Spanish tenants' union on
“I have the impression that people are not going to move until something has changed once and for all and forever,” Maria Juarez, a 47-year-old psychologist, testified to AFPTV overnight. “I hope that what happened to Maricarmen will mark a turning point in this matter, in this serious problem that is housing. If this can mark a turning point, I for my part am ready to stay here all night, if necessary,” added Ricardo Lopez, a 40-year-old drugstore employee.
Ms Abascal, who has become a symbol of Spain's housing crisis, urged Spaniards to join the fight in a video message posted online hours before the protest.
“What happened to me must not happen to others again,” Maricarmen Abascal said from the hospital where she has been treated for exhaustion since her expulsion. “This should encourage people to fight and help change the laws that allowed my deportation.”
Ms Abascal was forced to leave the apartment where she had lived for 70 years after a real estate company bought the property and increased the rent by 275%, bringing it to 2,650 euros, according to the union.
For Enrique Ortega de Miguel, a 38-year-old graphic designer living with his mother, the housing market in Spain is “impossible”. “It’s a struggle to find affordable housing, and then you live in fear of being evicted,” he told AFP during the demonstration.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who had pledged to make housing a government priority, is under increasing pressure to act. Several demonstrations in different cities have been organized since his expulsion.
At the next cabinet meeting, his government is expected to approve a package of measures dubbed the “Maricarmen Decree,” which provides for the automatic renewal of rental contracts and tighter restrictions on evictions. However, it is not certain that these measures will be adopted by Parliament, where Mr. Sánchez's government does not have a majority. A similar bill was defeated earlier this year.
