An 87-year-old woman wrapped in a blanket on a stretcher has become a symbol of protest against high rent prices in Spain. Last Wednesday, María del Carmen Abascal, known as Maricarmen, was taken from her Madrid apartment by the police before it was evicted. Hundreds of demonstrators blocked the street in front of the building - to no avail.
On Saturday, according to government figures, 25,000 people protested in the center of the Spanish capital against the eviction and for lower rent prices. According to the organizers there were up to 300,000 demonstrators. Hundreds of them spent the night in tents in the central Puerta de Sol square. They demanded that “either the rental housing system collapses or the government falls.” Immediately after the forced eviction there were protests with thousands of participants.
The topic of expropriation does not only play a major role in the German capital. Young Spaniards in particular took to the streets to demand that Maricarmen stay in the apartment. Among other things, they demanded the expropriation of the building's owner - the real estate company Urbagestión.
Maricarmen had lived in the apartment for 70 years. Her father first transferred the fixed-price rental agreement to her mother and then, after her death, to Maricarmen. As a result, she should pay around 500 euros a month in rent. Urbagestión bought the building in 2020 and then demanded five times as much from Abascal, 2,650 euros in rent per month. However, the over eighty-year-old lives on a pension of 1,350 euros per month and is therefore unable to pay the later reduced rent of 1,650 euros. The company therefore ended the rental agreement.
Maricarmen, on the other hand, went to court, which initially ruled in favor of the pensioner. But in a later appeal, the judge spoke in favor of Urbagestión. Just like the Supreme Court, which ultimately affirmed the company's right to increase the rent. Legally, nothing stood in the way of eviction.
The political debate about Maricarmen had already gained momentum before that. The Spanish Housing Ministry under Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that it wanted to buy the apartment for Maricarmen, but the owner refused. "They just want to throw them out, that's all," a ministry source told Spanish newspaper El Pais, "they don't want to hear about solutions." According to media reports, an anonymous donor also wanted to pay Maricarmen's apartment rent for the rest of her life. But the real estate company apparently also blocked this.
So the situation continued to get worse. The authorities finally succeeded in their fourth attempt to evacuate Maricarmen's apartment at Reitro Park on Wednesday. Maricarmen was taken to the hospital because of exhaustion, where she spent the next few nights. On Friday she thanked the protesters from the hospital and said: "It wasn't meant to be, but please keep fighting."
The conflict over housing in major Spanish cities accompanied Sánchez all the way to New York for the UN General Assembly. Sánchez condemned the eviction, calling it "a social tragedy that we as a country cannot accept." He blamed the capital's regional government - led by the conservative PP party.
“Only one in 25,500 evictions annually”
According to media reports, the demonstrations took place last week in front of a building in Madrid that the regional government is said to have bought. Accordingly, the demonstrators shouted “Ayusos Penthouse for Maricarmen!” PP regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso criticized Prime Minister Sánchez for inciting the anger of the protesters, which was now directed at her personally. The eviction from Maricarmen's apartment was just "one eviction of the 25,500 that take place in Spain every year," Ayuso said.
The government's left-wing coalition partner Movimiento Sumar, however, called on Sánchez's PSOE to advance a royal decree law on evictions. The decree will be voted on during the next Council of Ministers meeting next Tuesday. According to public broadcaster RTVE, the decree provides for a moratorium on evictions for those who cannot be offered alternative accommodation, as in the case of Maricarmen. The pensioner called on Prime Minister Sánchez from the hospital to sign the “Maricarmen Decree” “to put an end to this nonsense.”
There is no majority for a solution by decree
The coalition partner increased the pressure on Sánchez's socialists at the weekend. If the decree is not presented, only partially presented or with weakened measures, the Sumar left-wing alliance will boycott the meeting, it said in a statement. Justice Minister Félix Bolaños of the PSOE said: “We must find comprehensive solutions for the majority of people who are struggling.”
But even if the coalition parties come to an agreement, the minority government lacks the majority in parliament to later ratify the decree. That is why the PSOE is said to have already approached former partners: the left-wing party Podemos and the Catalan separatist party Junts.
There will be parliamentary elections in Spain next year. But on Saturday morning, 20,000 demonstrators in Madrid called for immediate elections. However, they were not referring to forced evictions and housing shortages, but rather to the migration crisis in Ceuta: right-wing forces in Spain in particular see this as the Sánchez government's greatest failure.
