Maricarmen, evicted at the age of 87 after 71 years living in her house in Madrid

Maricarmen is on the streets at 87 years old. It is one in the afternoon and this elderly woman, in a wheelchair, has closed the door of her house for the last time. He will never be able to enter again, no matter how much he has spent 70 years there. This is the fourth eviction attempt that Maricarmen has endured, who has been fighting for eight years to stay against the owners of the home, Urba Gestión SL, who have rejected all the offers of help received and all the efforts of the Ministry of Housing. At the moment, he doesn't know what he's going to do. A cousin offers to host her for a few days at his house and the City Council assures that it has made a free “emergency place” available to her in a residence.

Despite the mobilization of some 400 activists in front of the entrance to his house, in the wealthy Retiro neighborhood of Madrid, some 50 anti-riot agents from the National Police with 15 milkmaids have carried out, since 10:45 this Wednesday, the eviction sentence of Maricarmen. Of the protesters, about a hundred have spent the night camped there as guard.

At around 11:30, the agents broke down the door of the Maricarmen building, number 46 Alcalde Sainz de Baranda Street. To access the old woman, in a wheelchair, and get her out of her house, on the sixth floor, they had another 30 people who were resisting along the stairs of the block, who they have taken out one by one, holding their hands and feet, after removing the last 50 who defended the portal. At 11:55, the stairs have been cleared, everyone outside, and at 12:25, they have finished evacuating the people who have spent the night with the woman, whose exit to the street is expected at any moment. At 12:40, the Samur came for her.

And what awaits Maricarmen now? The people who were with her already explain on the street that she is with her cousin, who will be the one to accompany her. The relative, who has four children and a 50-meter house, has offered to let her go with him for a few days, but she still doesn't know what she will do. While presenting the municipal fleet of ambulances, the mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, stressed that the City Council offers Maricarmen “a care and housing resource so that, immediately, he can have a roof under which he can sleep, can rest and can try to alleviate or recover from the physical and psychological situation in which he finds himself”, because the administrations “cannot get out of the way”. A spokesperson for the Social Policy area points out that, due to age, Maricarmen will be transferred to a residence where free “emergency places” are available. Social services are on site, although the City Council has not specified which residence they will transfer her to for privacy.

The Tenants Union, which supports Maricarmen, denounces “a lot of violence, with hair pulling, fingers in the eyes and kneeing” by the police, as well as the use of pepper spray. After breaking down the door, the activists below warned those above that they were being sprayed with pepper spray and the coughing could be heard from several floors above. Neighbors in 2nd B have given them milk to combat the itching and cookies. “Fifty police officers to remove an elderly woman” and “this eviction is murder,” shouted dozens of protesters on the other side of the police cordon.

The woman remains for the moment in her apartment, on the sixth, where in a video published early in the morning by the union, she addressed those gathered through tears: "Good morning, colleagues, I thank you for the exercise you are doing all night sleeping on the street. Please continue, but do not hurt each other, this has to be peaceful. I keep hearing all your noise, a hug for everyone and for all the people who are supporting me in this cruel fight of a person who "He wants to make money, but he must not forget that he has fathers and mothers and that tomorrow they may find themselves in the situation in which, unfortunately, I find myself."

On the stairs, at the beginning of the eviction operation, there was silence, nerves and expectation. The last activists separating the police from Maricarmen were waiting on the sixth, while, in the background, the police could be heard talking to the militants on the lower landings. Around 11:20, the agents began to break down the door with a sledgehammer or battering ram while constant and loud banging could be heard inside the stairs, and the union activists shouted: “15 days for Maricarmen, we only ask for that.”

At 10:15, almost an hour after the arrival of the judicial commission to execute the sentence, a union spokesperson already told this newspaper that the situation was “critical” and the eviction was unstoppable and imminent. The mediators asked for an extension of a month or a few weeks, but the property, Urba Gestión SL, was closed altogether. "The judge has said that she wants to carry out the eviction. The company has refused to accept the last offer. The eviction is going to be carried out. That is why we continue to reinforce the cordon to accompany the colleagues who are still resisting at the portal. This eviction is illegal," the spokesperson denounced.

The offer of a well-known writer, who prefers to remain anonymous, to pay her neighbor's rent for life has not been accepted either. The Ministry of Housing, which tried to acquire the apartment, also assures that Urba Gestión has not responded to any of the proposals. "They want to throw her out and that's it. They don't want to hear solutions," ministry sources said. Urba Gestión wants Maricarmen to pay 1,650 euros in rent - they started at 2,650 -, with his pension of 1,350. They do not negotiate and they do not want to give their version to the media that asks them for it. What they are trying to do, in reality, is legal. Maricarmen has a surrogate contract twice. Her father died shortly after signing and it passed to her mother, who died in 2005 and the daughter inherited her contract. It is illegal for this to happen, and that is why Urba Gestión has everything to gain, no matter how much its tenant has been living in that house for 71 years.

The protesters, who had taken advantage of the negotiation to stretch their legs, sat down again to defend the portal. The street has been closed by the police since 6:00, at which time the wave of activists greeted the agents with chants of “Ayuso's attic for Maricarmen” and “Maricarmen stays.” Meanwhile, the doors of the building remained closed and covered with cardboard and, inside, several dozen activists remained stationed on the stairs, prepared in case the police managed to overcome the human barrier outside.

From time to time, some went up to the first floor, where a neighbor had opened his house to spend the night and, during the morning, so that they could use the bathroom and drink water. They shared the few remaining chocolate cookies, calmed the anxiety of waiting by smoking at the windows, and took turns sitting on the chairs and the sofa. No one has had breakfast, not even the neighbor's dog who, when things get hot, barks at the windows. A police helicopter flies over the area.

On the 1st right, the floor that serves as their refuge, more and more activists were looking out of the windows and following the eviction from above. Some took the opportunity to charge their cell phones, which kept them connected with their colleagues on the portal and the two negotiators who spoke with the police and the judicial committee. A group had even stationed itself on the top floor of the block, next to the windows of the interior patio. They feared that the riot police would enter through the roof, something “very unlikely,” they acknowledge, although “it would not be the first time.” Many worry about the well-being of outside colleagues. They threw bottles of water and constant shouts of encouragement. “My neighbors take care of me and not the police,” around 300 people sang in the street.

The place, converted into a television set, has been approached at dawn from MEP Irene Montero, from Podemos, to comedian Ignatius in shorts. Later, IU deputies Enrique Santiago, Toni Valero, Nahuel González and Alberto Ibáñez, deputy spokesperson for Sumar and deputy for Compromís, attended. In its previous eviction attempt, in June, even the UN demanded that the Spanish State paralyze it and find a solution. “Where is the progressive government?” the protesters ask.

Around 7:30, the agents removed some tents that the protesters had placed as a wall and separated those who remained standing. Meanwhile, the union projected a video of Maricarmen on the façade and appealed to the agents: “Take off your helmets and say no.” Four officers responded by taking off their helmets, but standing firm in their positions. The police then removed the press from the entrance and took them to the edge of the police cordon, at the end of the street.

At that time, more protesters joined behind the cordon and new vans until there were 10. Chants continued as a show of support: "No, we are not afraid; yes, we are angry." At 7:45, the police began to intervene. Riot officers released the protesters holding each other's hands, although slowly and with great difficulty. The activists left the dead weight of their bodies to make their eviction difficult. The police took each one they removed to the opposite sidewalk, where they identified them.

“Fight is the only way,” they encouraged each other around 8:00 while, one by one, they were being pulled away from their position, dragged by up to four agents each. After almost half an hour, the agents stopped their actions for a moment, talking among themselves and on the radio. They seemed to hesitate and the protesters asked them: “Take off your helmet.” The union spokesperson begged them, with a megaphone, to spend “10 seconds thinking about Maricarmen and that she could be their grandmother.”

Around 8:00, five more milkmaids joined in, 15 in total, forming a continuum of Sainz de Baranda vans between Maiquez and Antonio Arias streets. The protesters asked “for the press to pass,” but the officers kept all the journalists behind the police cordon. At 8.0, the situation became tense. A protester managed to break the cordon and join the human barrier, despite the fact that the police pounced on him, threw him to the ground and hit him. At that time, many neighbors came out of their porches in suits to go to work and were surprised to see more than 15 milkmaids cutting Alcalde Sainz de Baranda. “All this for an old woman?” some asked. A neighbor approached the barrier to distribute bottles of water from a bag, but a police officer asked her to stop and leave the area. The protesters hailed her: “And beautiful, and beautiful, and queen, and queen, and queen.”

Around 8:40, the police stopped. The union's lawyer, Beatriz Duroa, spoke with the Samur Social while Emergencies treated two people, "very minor", one with a small wound on one hand and another, a woman "who already brought her knee from home bad and who has hurt herself." The Government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, assured TVE around 9:00 that he has been trying for more than two hours to get the agents to let the press pass, but that they are acting "by court order and to protect them from violent groups." Delegation sources point out that they do not direct the device and that they are "against this eviction", while the delegate tweeted that "it is deeply unfair and unacceptable in a State that should be as social as it is legal."

The spokesperson for Más Madrid in the Assembly, Manuela Bergerot, called the delegate to demand that the “shameful and aberrant” eviction be stopped and that “the excess of violence against the people who have gone to defend Mari Carmen” stop. The Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez García, explained that the Government contacted the company "to make them understand that, above their economic interest, there is the social nature of this housing" and that it tried to mediate to find a solution that would allow "to compensate for these rents." In his opinion, this is “a very dramatic day” in which “the consequences of wild speculation are evident” and he has reproached that, while social and neighborhood movements were organizing to try to prevent eviction, “the person who has maximum powers in terms of housing in this community, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, went again to roll out the red carpet for these speculators, these vultures, to tell them that she does not intend to regulate the market here.”

At 9:20, two ladies appeared with a folder and started talking to the police and it was not known if they were mediators or from the commission. They were the second. The protesters, in any case, were clear about it and received them with the shout of “welcome, judicial commission.” About twenty more riot police joined in. The time had come.

The woman spent the night at home, where she tried to rest surrounded by family and her close circle from the union, while, below, in her porch, the following hours were one of surveillance, tension and uncertainty. They set up tents, occupied the streets and organized assemblies in crowded groups to manage resistance to the police.

The majority of the protesters are young university students and have experience of the camps for Palestine at the Complutense University in 2024 and 2025 or of the wave of youth protests against climate change in 2019. One of them is Martina, 25 years old, who said during the night, dozing, that she was here to defend the “right to a roof” no matter how much she goes to work at 9:00.