Rent protests in Spain: pensioner Maricarmen has died

dpa/kna/taz | The 87-year-old Spanish woman Maricarmen Abascal is dead. The pensioner died on Wednesday in the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid. Her death, two weeks after she was evicted from her apartment in Madrid, was greeted with shock and anger in Spain.

Demonstrators, who have been holding out for days in a protest camp against the housing shortage in the country in the central Puerta del Sol square in Madrid, observed a minute's silence for the woman whose fate has become the trigger and symbol of the fight for affordable housing. People lit candles and others laid flowers in front of their former home.

In September, the pensioner unexpectedly became an icon of resistance against excessive rents and powerful companies. Maricarmen Abascal had lived in her apartment in the central Retiro district for 71 years - until on September 23, police officers broke open the door with a sledgehammer and stormed the apartment. The 87-year-old was forcibly evicted. Paramedics took the exhausted woman to the hospital, and the images of Abascal on the couch went around the world.

This was preceded by a long battle between Abascal and a real estate investment company. He bought the building in which her apartment was located in 2020. Your old rent was 500 euros a month. However, the new owners demanded 1,600 euros. She became a symbol across the country with her refusal to pay a 275 percent rent increase.

Protest camps then sprung up in dozens of cities, and tens of thousands of people took to the streets with the slogan “We are all Maricarmen,” in a country where average rents have almost doubled in the past ten years and, according to estimates, there is a shortage of more than 700,000 apartments. The drastically increased rents and the lack of living space have been the number one problem for Spaniards for years. The unions announced a general strike that would paralyze the country on November 11th.

“We regret to announce that Maricarmen passed away today,” the tenants’ association announced on Wednesday evening. The organization had already assisted the woman before she was taken by the police from the apartment in Madrid where she had lived for 70 years on September 23rd after a years-long battle with her landlord. “The real estate speculators killed Maricarmen,” said tenants’ association spokeswoman Alicia del Río on television.

Hundreds of people marched on Wednesday from the protest camp to the parliament building, where government decrees for more tenant protection failed on Friday due to the majority of conservative and right-wing populist parties. The left-wing head of government Pedro Sánchez therefore scheduled new elections for November 29th on Monday. “These are not deaths, these are murders” and “murderers, murderers, murderers,” chanted demonstrators at parliament.

In view of the outrage over the woman's fate, there was even an agreement with the landlord about returning to the apartment. According to her lawyer Beatriz Duro, the signing of a new tenancy agreement with a term of eight years was imminent.

Abascal was taken directly from her apartment to a hospital two weeks ago. Already very weak, she turned to the Spaniards from the hospital. “I failed to defend my home, but I fought to make others fight for what was right for them,” she said from her hospital bed.

Sánchez expressed his condolences to the relatives. "All my condolences go out to the family and loved ones of Maricarmen. A silent greeting also to all who feel this loss as their own today. May she rest in peace," he wrote on the platform X. His Minister of Health Mónica García also spoke on

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative People's Party PP, expressed his condolences. At the same time, the head of the largest opposition party opposed making Abascal's death a campaign issue. "No election campaign, no parties, nor self-serving instrumentalization. (...) In the face of someone's death, only respect is appropriate."

The right-wing populist Vox, with whom the PP wants to govern together after a possible election victory, expressed itself completely differently. She accused the 87-year-old's supporters of being to blame for her death. “They killed Maricarmen,” the party wrote on