Spain | “Ni una Maricarmen más”: Madrid protests against rent usury

The brutal repression of María del Carmen Abascal is driving Madrilenians onto the streets. You know: it can happen to her too. Photo: AFP/Thomas Coex Hundreds of tents were still standing on the Puerta del Sol in Madrid on Tuesday morning. The people who have been holding out for days hope that the government will implement their demands on this day. The central square in the Spanish capital has turned into a huge protest camp in the fight for fairer rental policies in Madrid and throughout Spain.

The trigger for the protests was the forced eviction from the apartment of 87-year-old María del Carmen Abascal, known to everyone as Maricarmen, in the Retiro district. Maricarmen had lived in the apartment in one of the most expensive districts of Madrid for 70 years and had benefited from an old rental agreement for a long time. Then in 2018, the real estate company Urbagestión bought her apartment and increased the monthly rent from 500 to 2,650 euros.

With a pension of 1,350 euros per month, the pensioner could not pay this and sued. She lost - but previous eviction attempts were prevented.

On what was now the fourth attempt, the police, as can be seen on videos on social media, fought their way through a crowd of people who were trying to prevent the eviction in front of the 87-year-old's house. Maricarmen, who was unable to walk, was carried out of her house on a stretcher and taken to a hospital.

The images caused widespread outrage across Spain. With 25,000 evictions every year, Maricarmen's case was, according to 24-year-old tenant rights activist Alberto Macías, "the final straw that broke the camel's back."

»I want what happened to me to help prevent the same thing from happening to other people. I want it to inspire people to fight back to change the unjust laws that allowed my eviction.”

Maricarmen spoke out after being evicted from the hospital: »I want what happened to me to help prevent the same thing from happening to other people. I want it to inspire people to fight back to change the unjust laws that allowed my eviction.”

Under the motto “Ni una Maricarmen más” (“No more Maricarmen”), tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Madrid on Saturday. The organizers of the Sindicato de Inquilinas e Inquilinos, the Spanish tenants' union, speak of 300,000 participants, the Ministry of the Interior of around 25,000 participants.

After the demonstration, some people spontaneously stayed in the central Puerta del Sol square and set up a protest camp. They pitched their tents and since then more and more people have joined. Hundreds of tents have been filling the square for three nights now. There are calls on social media to come and attend the meetings and workshops that are spontaneously organized and also to camp at Puerta del Sol. “Come to continue flooding Sol with anger and dignity,” writes the Sindicato de Inquilinas on Instagram.

The protest camp is reminiscent of the famous Indignados movement in 2011: At that time, demonstrators camped on the Puerta del Sol for weeks to protest against cuts in social programs and corruption. The left-wing party Podemos later emerged from the nationwide movement.

Valeria Racu, spokeswoman for the Sindicato de Inquilinas, describes the mood in the square to the daily newspaper “El País”: “We are all overwhelmed, because something has been sparked here. The pictures of Maricarmen from last week were inexcusable, we can no longer accept that the vultures, the rentiers and the speculators are in charge in this country.

Even before the cabinet meets this Tuesday to pass a new law, it was announced on Monday evening that Maricarmen could return to her apartment. After more than four hours, an agreement was reached that provides for an eight-year contract and a rent that does not exceed 30 percent of their net income. Maricarmen still needs to confirm this agreement and can return as soon as she is discharged from the hospital.

The Sindicato de Inquilinas commented on this on their Instagram page as follows: "It is a victory for organization and social pressure. But an individual solution cannot hide the collective problem: thousands of tenants continue to be exposed to the same violence." On Tuesday they will demand a solution for everyone from the government.

This includes the abolition of temporary rental income and evictions without alternative housing being offered. In addition, measures should be taken to combat fraud.

According to the real estate portal “Idealista,” average rents in Spain have almost doubled in ten years. In Madrid, rents rose by 70 percent in the last seven years, while wages grew by just 14 percent in the same period. In addition, there is currently very little tenant protection in Spain. There are no permanent rental contracts, so the rent can increase with every new contract and the fear of being thrown out of the apartment at any time is very real, especially for young people, workers and pensioners.

At the events at Puerta del Sol, however, it is not only the right-wing conservative regional government of Madrid under regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso that is being held responsible for this crisis. It cannot be the case that absolutely nothing has been done about the housing crisis in eight years of a left-wing government, shouts a speaker. "We have to build up more pressure against our government."

However, the minority government under Pedro Sánchez will have a difficult time getting a new housing decree through parliament. To do this, she needs the votes of all parties except the right-wing Partido Popular and the right-wing extremist Vox. However, opinions on how far the measures should go differ widely among the various parties: the left-wing party Podemos wants to expropriate the "vulture funds", while the Catalan regional party Junts is seen as more economically liberal.

Even before the ministerial conference, the disagreements became apparent. According to »El País«, negotiations between the ministers who were significantly involved in the housing decree took place throughout the night from Monday to Tuesday. Accordingly, Sumar, the smaller coalition partner of the left-wing minority government, submitted a proposal to Sánchez's PSOE party, which, among other things, provides for the regulation of room rentals, the automatic extension of rental contracts and increased protection against forced evictions. At the same time, El País reports that the Catalan party Junts has threatened to withdraw from the agreement and accuses the government of having moved away from the pact reached in recent days. According to El País, the government assumes that the decree will not fully satisfy anyone, but that it is still important that it is passed quickly. At the same time, many competencies in housing policy do not lie with the state government, but with the regional governments.

The right-wing conservative Madrilenian government, which itself is criticized for purchasing a 6.3 million luxury penthouse with public money, has simply not implemented a state government law since 2023 that allows rent caps to apply in districts with particularly high rents.

In many videos seen on social media, protesters are making noise with their house keys. “We have the keys to all the houses,” is their announcement. Maricarmen's wish is already coming true, the resistance is there. The Sindicato de Inquilinas is calling for the next eviction in Madrid, which is scheduled for Tuesday, to be blocked.

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