Spanish pensioner whose eviction sparked housing crisis protests dies at 87

Maricarmen Abascal died on October 8th at the age of 87, less than three weeks after being carried out on a stretcher from the apartment she had lived in for more than seven decades. She had been unable to afford the rent increases imposed by her landlord, and the forced removal—carried out under court order in late September—set off a cascade of events that would reshape Spanish politics and put the country's housing crisis at the center of a national reckoning.

Abascal's father had rented the property in 1956. When he and her mother died, she inherited the tenancy, and for decades she paid a capped rent of 500 euros a month. In 2018, a company called Urbagestión purchased the building and immediately raised her rent to 2,650 euros—more than five times what she had been paying. Her monthly pension was 1,350 euros. The company later offered to reduce the rent to 1,650 euros, still 300 euros more than she received each month. Three times the courts blocked attempts to evict her. But on September 23rd, police arrived with a stretcher and removed her from her home.

She was taken to a hospital. The landlord, facing mounting public pressure, then offered to let her return at a lower rate. But Abascal could not sign the agreement from her hospital bed. She never returned home.

When news of her death reached Puerta del Sol, a square in central Madrid where thousands of people had been camping since her eviction to demand affordable housing, the crowd fell silent. Then came a collective gasp. Candles were lit. An altar was built in front of the Madrid regional government headquarters. Protesters held signs that read "it's not a death, it's a killing" and "Mari Carmen, the grandmother of the whole country." A few hundred people marched to the Spanish Congress, chanting "We will not tolerate a single eviction more" and "the fight will continue, Mari Carmen is still alive." After hours of chanting, the crowd fell silent again. Then, in unison, they shouted: "murderers."

Abascal had recorded a video from her hospital bed after the eviction. "I haven't managed to defend my home," she said, "but I have fought so that others can learn to fight for what's theirs." The Madrid Tenants' Union, in a statement announcing her death, said her situation had marked "a turning point in the history of this country," but that the cost of reaching that turning point had been "too high." Union spokesperson Alicia del Río said: "Speculation costs lives, and today rentierism has finished killing our colleague Maricarmen."

The political consequences were immediate and severe. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had attempted to push emergency housing legislation through Congress in response to Abascal's case. It was rejected. On Monday—four days before her death—Sánchez called for early elections on November 29th, saying he needed "a broader progressive majority" to overcome resistance from political elites and push through housing reforms. The rejection of the housing bills, combined with other pressures including corruption scandals and cost-of-living concerns, had weakened his coalition government, which does not hold a parliamentary majority. Unions announced a general strike for November 11th to demand housing reforms.

Opposition leaders offered condolences. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, head of the conservative People's Party, wrote on social media that "in the face of a person's death, only respect is in order." Most polls suggest the conservatives will emerge as the largest party in the November election, though they would likely need support from the hard-right Vox party to form a government. The political right had argued that the government's proposed housing interventions would reduce the number of rental properties available and drive prices higher.

Abascal's death was received as confirmation of what her case had already suggested: that Spain's housing crisis was not merely an economic problem but a moral one, with consequences that extended beyond statistics into the lives of ordinary people who could no longer afford to live where they had always lived. The question now is whether the political upheaval her death has triggered will produce the reforms that her life, and her final months, demanded.