Madrid housing protest camp grows

CRISIS: ‘You could be the next Maricarmen,’ a banner read, while a protester said rents should go down, as ‘I’m fed up with washing the underpants of my 53-year-old son’

A protest camp in Madrid yesterday grew to include dozens of tents after the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her lifelong home triggered outrage over gaps in tenant protections.

Images of Maricarmen Abascal being carried from her Madrid flat on a stretcher on Wednesday after police broke down her door have thrust Spain’s housing crisis back into the spotlight ahead of a general election due next year.

Thousands of people on Saturday marched through the streets of Madrid rattling keys and blowing whistles to call for measures to curb rising housing costs and make evictions more difficult.

Demonstrators hold up keys as they protest in Madrid on Saturday against Spain’s housing crisis after the forceful eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her apartment.

Photo: Reuters

“You could be the next Maricarmen,” read one banner on display at the rally.

Spanish government authorities put the turnout at about 25,000, while the Madrid Tenants’ Union, which organized the protest, said more than 300,000 had taken part.

After the rally wrapped up, some activists set up a protest camp at Puerta del Sol square in the city center, the union said in a statement, urging people to gather there.

Maricarmen Abascal, 87, is transported on a stretcher to an ambulance on Wednesday after she was evicted from the Madrid home where she had lived for more than seven decades.

Photo: Reuters

“It’s time to change the rules of the game,” said protester Maria Juarez, a 47-year-old psychologist. “People aren’t going to leave until something changes once and for all.”

Police looked on as about a dozen tents were set up in the square in front of the headquarters of the Madrid regional government, surrounded by thousands of protesters.

By the early hours of yesterday, El Pais reported that the number of tents had grown to about 150, with hundreds of people planning to spend the night.

News agency EFE put the number at about 100 tents.

Abascal was forced to leave the apartment where she had lived for 70 years after a real-estate firm acquired the property and raised the rent by 275 percent to 2,650 euros (US$3,019), the union said.

Now a symbol of Spain’s housing crisis, she had urged Spaniards to join the protest in a video message posted online just hours before it got under way.

“I want what has happened to me to serve so that it does not happen to other people,” she said from hospital, where she has been treated for exhaustion since her eviction.

“I want it to encourage people to fight and to help change the laws that have allowed me to be evicted,” she added in the video posted by the tenants’ union.

Protester Enrique Ortega de Miguel, a 38-year-old graphic designer who lives with his mother, said the housing market in Spain was “impossible.”

“It is a struggle to find a place you can afford, then you live in fear of being forced out,” he said at the march on Saturday.

Maricarmen Arnedo, a 76-year-old pensioner, said that while older people were being forced out of their homes, “young people can’t move out of their parents’ homes.”

“We want house prices and rents to come down, because I’m fed up with washing the underpants of my 53-year-old son,” she added.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, a socialist, has faced regular protests across Spain over housing since Abascal’s eviction.

The Spanish government is expected to approve a package of measures dubbed the “Maricarmen decree” at its next Cabinet meeting, which would include the automatic renewal of rental contracts and further restrictions on evictions.

However, it is unclear whether the package will be approved by parliament, where Sanchez’s government lacks a majority.

While a similar bill was defeated earlier this year, Abascal’s case has increased pressure on political parties to act.

The Bank of Spain estimates the country of about 50 million people is short of 700,000 homes, based on the gap between demand and new construction.

Spain has little public housing, while rents have been driven up by increased demand, including from tourism and population growth linked to immigration, analysts say.