{"id":907124,"date":"2026-09-27T07:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T07:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/907124\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T07:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T07:30:10","slug":"eviction-of-87-year-old-puts-spains-deepening-housing-crisis-in-the-spotlight-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/907124\/","title":{"rendered":"Eviction of 87-year-old puts Spain\u2019s deepening housing crisis in the spotlight | Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Images of an octogenarian being evicted from the home she had lived in for seven decades on a stretcher, flanked by protesters and police officers, sparked indignation across Spain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hours later, people began taking to the streets. In Madrid, an estimated 10,000 people turned up on Wednesday, wielding signs that read \u201cShame\u201d and \u201cOut with the vulture funds\u201d, to protest against the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal. From the northern tip of Spain to the south, people poured into plazas calling for a nationwide reckoning over access to housing.<\/p>\n

The catalyst was the eviction of Abascal, now known across the country by her first name, Maricarmen. The 87-year-old woman with a disability said she had been forced to leave her home after she was unable<\/a> to afford the 230% rent hike demanded by the investment fund that bought her apartment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis eviction is the canary in the coalmine,\u201d said political scientist Cristina Monge. \u201cIt\u2019s become a symbol, seen as the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the issue of housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was, as newspaper El Pa\u00eds said in an editorial, a glimpse of a housing market that had become completely unmoored from the average income in Spain, as rents rose<\/a> 80% in a decade, while the cost of homes had climbed by 63%. \u201cThe law was upheld, and the market worked. But it is the law of the jungle in a broken market, and it is a failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The investment fund linked to the eviction of Maricarmen did not reply to a request for comment from the Guardian.<\/p>\n

Saturday saw around 25,000 people, according to government figures, take to the streets of Madrid, rattling keys as they called for measures to curb rising housing costs and make evictions more difficult. Some brought tents and sleeping bags, announcing plans to set up a protest camp in Madrid\u2019s central Sol plaza.<\/p>\n

The eviction had left many in Spain grappling with a sense of \u201cpowerlessness\u201d, said Monge, given that the issue of housing had also been at the forefront of the Spanish Indignados movement, or 15-M, the years-long anti-austerity and anti-corruption protest movement that involved millions of Spaniards and reshaped<\/a> the country\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, 15 years later, housing is still the number one concern of Spaniards. And there are still evictions every day, to the order of about 25,000 per year,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the paradox is that the country\u2019s government includes some of the same people who led the 15-M protests. And still, housing remains an enormous challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rents and house prices have soared in the last decade in Spain. Photograph: Susana Vera\/Reuters<\/p>\n

As anger mounted this week, politicians laid the blame on each other for the eviction. Rights campaigners and researchers weighed in with potential solutions, citing the more than <\/a>3m homes believed to be sitting empty across the country or government figures that suggest social housing<\/a> makes up just 2.5% of the total stock in Spain, compared to 14% in France and 34% in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

The head of one of the country\u2019s biggest labour unions called for investment funds to be \u201ckicked out\u201d of the housing market. \u201cHomes are for living in, not for large corporations to do business,\u201d said Unai Sordo of the Workers\u2019 Commissions (CCOO) as he called for a tax system that would make \u201cthe business of hoarding homes unprofitable\u201d.<\/p>\n

The UN\u2019s special rapporteur on the right to housing, Koldo Casla, called on Spain to amend the laws governing its legal system, describing it as \u201cimpossible to understand\u201d how the profitability of a real estate company had been prioritised over Maricarmen\u2019s right to housing.<\/p>\n

The leftwing coalition Sumar, the junior partner in the government, said it would push the socialist-led government to greenlight the expropriation of Maricarmen\u2019s former home as well as put forward a package of rent freezes.<\/p>\n

The widespread demand for change has cast a spotlight on the deep divisions that exist among Spain\u2019s political parties when it comes to the issue of housing. These divisions were laid bare earlier this year<\/a> when the conservative People\u2019s party, the far-right Vox and the hardline Catalan pro-independence party Junts voted to end a moratorium on evictions that for six years had managed to shield some vulnerable tenants from eviction.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Spain\u2019s prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, who is under fire for not doing more to ensure his government had carried through on its promises of making housing a priority, promised to swiftly introduce a raft of measures. \u201cMaricarmen\u2019s eviction is a social tragedy that we cannot accept,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While his government had in 2023 managed<\/a> to pass legislation that strengthened tenant protection and widened access to rent control, regions led by the People\u2019s party had wielded their powers over housing<\/a> to avoid implementing parts of the legislation.<\/p>\n

Among those who had ignored parts of the legislation was the rightwing leader of the Madrid region, Isabel D\u00edaz Ayuso, who in recent weeks has faced questions over her administration\u2019s decision to allegedly<\/a> spend \u20ac6.3m (\u00a35.4m) of public funds on a residential penthouse to use as a temporary office.<\/p>\n

The striking contrast between the allegations against Ayuso and the eviction of Maricarmen has repeatedly cropped up this week, from the decision to hold Wednesday\u2019s protest in Madrid on a boulevard next to the penthouse, to the chants urging \u201cAyuso\u2019s penthouse for Maricarmen\u201d.<\/p>\n

Demonstrators gather in front of a penthouse bought as an office with public funds by Isabel D\u00edaz Ayuso. Photograph: Burak Akbulut\/Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The regional leader has so far sought to downplay the significance of Maricarmen\u2019s eviction, describing it as \u201cone out of the 25,500 that take place every year in Spain\u201d and noting that it had been authorised by the country\u2019s courts.<\/p>\n

While the story of Maricarmen had dominated headlines, turning the octogenarian into the poster woman for those bearing the brunt of Spain\u2019s soaring real estate market, many pointed to her plight as a glimpse of a wider reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaricarmen\u2019s case is not an isolated incident; it is just one more example of the suffering endured by thousands of households in Spain,\u201d Amnesty International Spain said in a statement. \u201cBold measures must be taken immediately. Institutions must go beyond simply expressing regret in the press, they must take action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Images of an octogenarian being evicted from the home she had lived in for seven decades on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-907124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}