Images of an octogenarian being evicted on a stretcher from the house she had lived in for seven decades, flanked by protesters and police, have sparked outrage across Spain.
A few hours later, people began to take to the streets. In Madrid, around 10,000 people gathered on Wednesday, holding signs reading “Shame” and “No more vulture funds”, to protest the expulsion of Maricarmen Abascal. From the northern tip of Spain to the south, people flocked to squares to demand national decision-making on access to housing.
The catalyst was the expulsion of Abascal, now known throughout the country by her first name, Maricarmen. The 87-year-old disabled woman said she was forced to leave her home because she could not afford to pay the 230% rent increase demanded by the investment fund that bought her apartment.
“This expulsion is the canary in the coal mine,” said political scientist Cristina Monge. “It has become a symbol, considered the tip of the iceberg when it comes to housing.”
It is, as the newspaper El País said in an editorial, a glimpse of a real estate market completely disconnected from average income in Spain, with rents having increased by 80% in a decade, while the cost of housing has soared by 63%. “The law was respected and the market worked. But it’s the law of the jungle in a broken market, and it’s a failure.”
The investment fund linked to Maricarmen’s eviction did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.
On Saturday, around 25,000 people, according to government figures, took to the streets of Madrid, clanging their keys to demand measures to curb rising housing costs and make evictions more difficult. Some brought tents and sleeping bags, announcing their intention to establish a protest camp in Sol Square in central Madrid.
The eviction left many people in Spain struggling with a feeling of “helplessness,” Monge said, given that the housing issue was also at the forefront of Spain’s Indignados movement, or 15-M, the anti-austerity and anti-corruption protest movement that involved millions of Spaniards and reshaped the country’s politics.
“Today, 15 years later, housing remains the first concern of Spaniards. And there are still evictions every day, on the order of around 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 yet housing remains a huge challenge.”
As anger mounted this week, politicians blamed each other for the expulsion. Human rights activists and researchers have offered potential solutions, citing more than 3 million homes. These homes are thought to be empty across the country or government figures suggest that social housing represents just 2.5% of the total stock in Spain, compared to 14% in France and 34% in the Netherlands.
The president of one of the country’s largest unions has called for “excluding” investment funds from the real estate market. “Houses are there for living in, not for big companies to do business in,” said Unai Sordo of the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO), calling for a tax system that would make “the business of hoarding houses unprofitable.”
The UN special rapporteur on the right to housing, Koldo Casla, has called on Spain to change the laws that govern its legal system, calling it “impossible to understand” how the profitability of a real estate company was prioritized over Maricarmen’s right to housing.
The left-wing Sumar coalition, the government’s junior partner, said it would push the socialist government to greenlight the expropriation of Maricarmen’s former house and propose a package of rent freezes.
The widespread demand for change has highlighted the deep divisions that exist between Spain’s political parties on the issue of housing. These divisions were laid bare earlier this year when the conservative People’s Party, the far-right Vox party and the Catalan independence party Junts voted to end a moratorium on evictions that for six years had successfully protected some vulnerable tenants from eviction.
On Wednesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, criticized for not doing more to ensure his government kept its promises to make housing a priority, promised to quickly introduce a series of measures. “The expulsion of Maricarmen is a social tragedy that we cannot accept,” he said.
While his government succeeded in 2023 in passing legislation strengthening tenant protections and expanding access to rent controls, regions led by the People’s Party had used their housing powers to avoid implementing parts of the legislation.
Among those who have ignored parts of the legislation is the Madrid region’s right-wing leader, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has been questioned in recent weeks over her administration’s decision to spend €6.3m (£5.4m) of public funds on a residential penthouse to be used as a temporary office.
The stark contrast between the allegations against Ayuso and Maricarmen’s expulsion has emerged repeatedly this week, from the decision to protest Wednesday in Madrid on a boulevard next to the penthouse, to chants calling for “Ayuso’s penthouse for Maricarmen.”
The regional leader has so far sought to downplay the significance of Maricarmen’s expulsion, describing it as “one of 25,500 that take place every year in Spain” and stressing that it had been authorized by the country’s courts.
While Maricarmen’s story made headlines, making the octogenarian the epitome of those bearing the brunt of Spain’s soaring property market, many pointed to her plight as a glimpse of a wider reality.
“Maricarmen’s case is not an isolated incident; it is simply another example of the suffering endured by thousands of households in Spain,” Amnesty International Spain said in a statement. “Bold steps must be taken immediately. Institutions must go beyond simply expressing regret in the press, they must act.”
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