Mass protests in Spain over eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal highlight housing crisis

Images of an octogenarian being evicted from the home she had lived in for seven decades on a stretcher, flanked by protesters and police officers, sparked indignation across Spain.

Hours later, people began taking to the streets. In Madrid, an estimated 10,000 people turned up on Wednesday, wielding signs that read “Shame” and “Out with the vulture funds”, to protest against the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal. From the northern tip of Spain to the south, people poured into plazas calling for a nationwide reckoning over access to housing.

The catalyst was the eviction of Abascal, now known across the country by her first name, Maricarmen. The 87-year-old woman with a disability said she had been forced to leave her home after she was unable to afford the 230% rent hike demanded by the investment fund that bought her apartment.

“This eviction is the canary in the coalmine,” said political scientist Cristina Monge. “It’s become a symbol, seen as the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the issue of housing.”

It was, as newspaper El País said in an editorial, a glimpse of a housing market that had become completely unmoored from the average income in Spain, as rents rose 80% in a decade, while the cost of homes had climbed by 63%. “The law was upheld, and the market worked. But it is the law of the jungle in a broken market, and it is a failure.”

The investment fund linked to the eviction of Maricarmen did not reply to a request for comment from the Guardian.

Saturday saw around 25,000 people, according to government figures, take to the streets of Madrid, rattling keys as they called for measures to curb rising housing costs and make evictions more difficult. Some brought tents and sleeping bags, announcing plans to set up a protest camp in Madrid’s central Sol plaza.

The eviction had left many in Spain grappling with a sense of “powerlessness”, said Monge, given that the issue of housing had also been at the forefront of the Spanish Indignados movement, or 15-M, the years-long anti-austerity and anti-corruption protest movement that involved millions of Spaniards and reshaped the country’s politics.

“Now, 15 years later, housing is still the number one concern of Spaniards. And there are still evictions every day, to the order of about 25,000 per year,” she said. “But the paradox is that the country’s government includes some of the same people who led the 15-M protests. And still, housing remains an enormous challenge.”

As anger mounted this week, politicians laid the blame on each other for the eviction. Rights campaigners and researchers weighed in with potential solutions, citing the more than 3m homes believed to be sitting empty across the country or government figures that suggest social housing makes up just 2.5% of the total stock in Spain, compared to 14% in France and 34% in the Netherlands.

The head of one of the country’s biggest labour unions called for investment funds to be “kicked out” of the housing market. “Homes are for living in, not for large corporations to do business,” said Unai Sordo of the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) as he called for a tax system that would make “the business of hoarding homes unprofitable”.

The UN’s special rapporteur on the right to housing, Koldo Casla, called on Spain to amend the laws governing its legal system, describing it as “impossible to understand” how the profitability of a real estate company had been prioritised over Maricarmen’s right to housing.

The leftwing coalition Sumar, the junior partner in the government, said it would push the socialist-led government to greenlight the expropriation of Maricarmen’s former home as well as put forward a package of rent freezes.

The widespread demand for change has cast a spotlight on the deep divisions that exist among Spain’s political parties when it comes to the issue of housing. These divisions were laid bare earlier this year when the conservative People’s party, the far-right Vox and the hardline Catalan pro-independence party Junts voted to end a moratorium on evictions that for six years had managed to shield some vulnerable tenants from eviction.

On Wednesday, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who is under fire for not doing more to ensure his government had carried through on its promises of making housing a priority, promised to swiftly introduce a raft of measures. “Maricarmen’s eviction is a social tragedy that we cannot accept,” he said.

While his government had in 2023 managed to pass legislation that strengthened tenant protection and widened access to rent control, regions led by the People’s party had wielded their powers over housing to avoid implementing parts of the legislation.

Among those who had ignored parts of the legislation was the rightwing leader of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who in recent weeks has faced questions over her administration’s decision to allegedly spend €6.3m (£5.4m) of public funds on a residential penthouse to use as a temporary office.

The striking contrast between the allegations against Ayuso and the eviction of Maricarmen has repeatedly cropped up this week, from the decision to hold Wednesday’s protest in Madrid on a boulevard next to the penthouse, to the chants urging “Ayuso’s penthouse for Maricarmen”.

The regional leader has so far sought to downplay the significance of Maricarmen’s eviction, describing it as “one out of the 25,500 that take place every year in Spain” and noting that it had been authorised by the country’s courts.

While the story of Maricarmen had dominated headlines, turning the octogenarian into the poster woman for those bearing the brunt of Spain’s soaring real estate market, many pointed to her plight as a glimpse of a wider reality.

“Maricarmen’s case is not an isolated incident; it is just one more example of the suffering endured by thousands of households in Spain,” Amnesty International Spain said in a statement. “Bold measures must be taken immediately. Institutions must go beyond simply expressing regret in the press, they must take action.”