María del Carmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman who became a symbol of Spain’s housing crisis after police broke down her door to evict her, urged Spaniards in a video posted Friday to “fight” for their homes. “I couldn’t defend my house, but I fought so that others could learn to fight for theirs,” Abascal said, speaking from a bed in a Madrid hospital where he was admitted on Wednesday after the eviction for health reasons. problems.Mrs. Abascal, known as Maricarmen, urged Spaniards to demonstrate in Madrid on Saturday afternoon against the evictions. “Please fight,” he said in the video, recorded Thursday and distributed on social media by a tenant union on Friday. The union, which is organizing Saturday’s protest, said Abascal would remain in hospital for a few days after suffering an episode of anxiety following the eviction, but that his condition was “not serious.” Abascal’s case has struck a chord among Spaniards fed up with rising housing costs, drawing thousands of protesters to the streets of cities across the country and piling pressure on Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s leftist prime minister, who had promised to make housing a priority for his government. This is what you need to know about Abascal and the housing problem in Spain. Why is Abascal now a face of the crisis? Abascal rose to prominence on Wednesday when police dragged away activists who had barricaded themselves in front of the Madrid house where he had lived for 70 years and then broke down his door. She was evicted after years of legal battles with Urbagestion, the real estate company that owned the apartment. Abascal’s father acquired the lease when the family moved there in the 1950s, according to his lawyer, Beatriz Duro. He passed it on to his wife, who in turn passed the rent-controlled contract in 2005 to Abascal, who lived in the apartment when Urba Gestión bought it in 2020, Duro said. According to Duro, Abascal was evicted because Urba Gestión had increased her rent from around $500 to $1,900 a month, much more than she could pay with her monthly pension of around $1,500. Urbagencia did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement carried by Spanish media, the company said it had evicted Ms Abascal because her lease had expired and that it had never attempted to increase her rent. The case reached the Spanish Supreme Court, which ruled in March in favor of Urba Gestión. The images of their eviction shook many, drawing renewed attention to the real estate crisis, an issue that is constantly considered the main concern of Spaniards. “We are all Maricarmen,” read one protester’s banner Wednesday. Major problem? Spain has a housing deficit of around 755,000 homes, according to the Bank of Spain, a major problem in a country of approximately 50 million. Experts say the problem has been exacerbated by the slow pace of construction, the arrival of more than three million migrants since the pandemic and a surge in tourism – a record 100 million visitors are projected to visit Spain this year. has made those prices increasingly unaffordable. In Madrid, residents need approximately 18 years of annual salary to buy an apartment, according to CaixaBank Research. “All of this is creating a kind of perfect storm: high demand and very low supply,” said Jorge Galindo, director of the Economic Policy Center at Esade, a think tank in Madrid. Evictions have fallen steadily since the eurozone crisis, to about 25,000 in 2025, from around 68,000 in 2014. But the evictions remain politically sensitive for the government, especially since Sánchez promised before taking office to end them. The demand for a steep rent increase that Abascal faced and the role of a real estate company in his eviction have angered Sánchez’s leftist base. Many of them blame private investment companies for increasing housing costs in Spain. The situation compounds a broader political crisis for Sánchez, whose associates and family members face several corruption charges and convictions. What is the government going to do? Facing more protests this weekend, Sánchez has promised that his government will respond to what he called a “social tragedy.” Sánchez’s minority government could send a bill to Parliament as soon as next week that would make evictions more difficult, freeze some rents and speed up some housing projects, but it is unclear whether such a measure would pass. Spanish media reported on Friday that Junts, a small right-wing Catalan separatist party that is not part of the government but sometimes votes with Sánchez to pass laws, was open to supporting the measure. A similar bill was rejected in February by Junts and the main opposition parties, who said the legislation would hurt small landowners.
