María del Carmen Abascal, 87, whose eviction sparked a nationwide wave of protests over Spain’s housing crisis, has died.
News of her death came two weeks after Maricarmen, as she was known across Spain, was evicted from the Madrid apartment where she had lived for more than seven decades.
The pensioner, whose apartment was bought by an investment company seeking to increase her rent by 230%, quickly became a symbol of the many people left behind by Spain’s booming property market.
The scenes of the eviction, during which police used tear gas to carry out the order, made headlines across Spain. The shocking images – showing Abascal being forcibly removed from her home on a stretcher, flanked by protesters and police – quickly crystallized into anger.
Around 10,000 people took to the streets of Madrid hours later, holding signs such as “Shame” and “We are all Maricarmen”. From the north to the south of Spain, people gathered in squares to protest the suffering caused by rents which had soared by 80% in the space of a decade while property prices had soared by 63%.
From the hospital where she was being treated for severe exhaustion, Abascal applauded this emerging movement. “I wish I was there with all of you,” she said in a video shot from her hospital bed. “But I’m not that lucky. So from now on, I ask you all to have courage and fight and defend what’s yours.”
As encampments began springing up across the country, the investment company that bought Abascal’s house said she could return. The agreement failed to quell the anger that boiled over following the expulsion.
This week, the wave of outrage led Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to call early general elections after right-wing and far-right parties rejected two emergency decrees proposed by his government to resolve the housing crisis.
Madrid’s tenants’ union said the solution came too late for the octogenarian. “This was a completely avoidable situation following a horrific ordeal,” he said in a statement announcing that Abascal had died in hospital, hours before signing a new lease with the investment company that evicted her.
“The events triggered by the injustice of his expulsion undoubtedly mark a turning point in the history of this country: massive demonstrations, camps in the squares, early elections and call for a general strike,” adds the text. “The housing debate is at the center of all of this, but the cost of getting here has been too high. »
Sánchez offered his condolences to Abascal’s family and friends. “A hug also to all those who feel this loss today as their own,” he wrote on social networks. “Rest in peace.”
Spanish Health Minister Mónica García said Abascal’s plight had “served to raise awareness across Spain, lighting a fuse that cannot be extinguished”, and adding that his “dignity and courage” had shown the way.
Podemos MEP and former Equality Minister Irene Montero was more direct. “It’s not a death, it’s a murder,” she wrote on social media. “Such damn anger. Thanks for fighting, Maricarmen.”
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP) – which voted against emergency housing measures last week – also offered his condolences.
“No campaign, no political parties, no partisan ends, no more bricks in the wall,” he wrote on social networks. “When a person dies, there should be only respect.”
His death came a day after Sánchez’s cabinet approved two new housing decrees intended to “maintain the spirit” of the two previous decrees that were rejected in Parliament last week by the PP, the far-right Vox party and the Catalan independence party Junts.
The 21 measures include making it easier to rent or buy new housing; expand eviction protections for vulnerable residents; regulate the rental of rooms; impose a new tax on seasonal rentals; prohibit speculative real estate purchases; and provide tax breaks to homeowners and renters who pay on time.
With the lower and upper houses of Parliament dissolved following the calling of early elections, the decrees will be passed by the Permanent Council of Congress, a special council that functions when Parliament is not in session.
The body’s 69 members are distributed proportionally among the different parliamentary groups to reflect the composition of the lower house, meaning Sánchez will likely have enough support to pass at least one of the decrees.
In the heart of Madrid, where activists set up a giant protest camp, news of Abascal’s death was met with a minute of silence. Soon after, hundreds of people marched from the camp to the country’s parliament chanting: “Maricarmen lives, the fight continues.” »
Gn world
