Barely a few minutes had passed since Maricarmen forcibly left her house when the call began to spread from phone to phone: “At seven, concentration in front of Ayuso's penthouse.” And so it was, when the time came, thousands of people gathered in front of Martínez Campos Street, 35, where the controversial home recently acquired by the Community of Madrid is located.
The protest, which has brought together 10,000 people according to the Government Delegation, has been increasing little by little during the day, which has forced the police to block the street. Dozens of National Police officers equipped with riot gear were guarding the scene. The protesters repeated some of the slogans repeated this morning over and over again: “Ayuso's attic for Maricarmen” and “Ayuso, resignation”, “shame, shame”.
The atmosphere on Paseo del General Martinez Campos has been full of young voices. The scene was celebrated by Emilio Díaz, a 90-year-old pensioner who observes the crowd from the side: "I am surprised that this has not happened before," he stated before applauding that "the young people are responding. Until now it seemed that they did not exist." Díaz also considered that “this has been the first step” for the demonstrations to continue in the coming months.
For Rodrigo, a university student, who preferred not to say his last name, the protest is justified and there are reasons to take to the streets. “Housing is a right and not an asset,” explains this young man about the Martínez Campos bus lane.
Marina Martín, a 25-year-old nurse, believed that the demonstration is necessary because it seems “a shame that an elderly woman is kicked out of her home.” But his discontent goes further: "It is impossible to buy a home and renting is very complicated. Everything goes to rent and you barely have any left for expenses," he claims.
After nine at night the protesters reached the Paseo de la Castellana, where they managed to cut off traffic and remain seated. After that, there were certain moments of tension. The officers fired rubber bullets to try to return the crowd to the side lanes, but the protesters managed to regroup in the center of the road. There, spokesperson Valeria Racu called for about 400 people who managed to regroup for a “sit-in for Maricarmen.”
The rally in the Chamberí neighborhood has been the epilogue to a day that began very early with the mobilization of hundreds of people in the Retiro District to try to prevent the eviction of Maricarmen, the 87-year-old woman who had been living in her apartment for 71 years and whom they managed to get out of her apartment on the fourth attempt. The more than 16 hours in which hundreds of protesters asked to paralyze or extend the eviction were of little avail. After having forcibly removed those who were clinging to the doorway of number 46 Sainz de Baranda Street to execute a sentence from the Supreme Court. The old woman has left on a stretcher and in an ambulance from the neighborhood Samur who saw her. In an atmosphere of despondency and a lost battle, the protesters called this protest through social networks and WhatsApp messages.
The call for the rally occurred moments later and without major difficulties in defining the meeting point: “See you this afternoon at the penthouse that Ayuso bought,” a spokesperson for the housing union mentioned at midday. Outraged people have gathered in front of the luxurious 485 square meter apartment, located in the Madrid district of Chamberí and whose purchase the Government of Isabel Diaz Ayuso has not been able to justify.
The Minister of Housing has made the president of the Community of Madrid the target of her criticism after the eviction. This morning, he reproached her that despite the fact that “she has maximum powers in matters of housing in this community, Mrs. 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.”
But the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid (FRAVM), another of the organizations that has supported the call, has pointed beyond the figure of Ayuso. In a statement published minutes after the eviction, he classified the work of the last three administrations in the city as a “profound failure” because “they have been incapable of defending the right to housing of their citizens against the cold and calculating voracity of the vulture funds owned by the evicted households.” They report that neither the Community of Madrid nor the City Council contacted Maricarmen or David, the other evicted person this Wednesday, nor with the companies that promoted the evictions to try to stop them.
The rally in front of the attic is the epicenter of a much larger campaign that threatens to spread throughout Spain. From the #Niundesahuciomás platform they have called for rallies at the same time in cities such as Ávila, Barcelona, Cádiz, Oviedo, Seville and Valencia. Most of them take place in front of government delegations.
