Maricarmen Abascal

María del Carmen Abascal Martín was born in Madrid. Her family moved into a rented flat at number 46 Calle Alcalde Sainz de Baranda, in the Retiro district, in 1956, when she was 17. She lived there with her parents and her brother. Her father, who had signed the lease, died in 1960, and her mother kept the tenancy until her own death in the flat in 2005. Maricarmen then took over the lease and stayed on in the home where she had spent almost her whole adult life.

Maricarmen worked for 32 years as a secretary at a pharmaceutical company and retired in 1998, according to BBC News Mundo. In retirement she lived on a pension of about 1,400 euros a month. Her lawyer, Beatriz Duro, recalled that only a year before her death she still walked, sang and lived fully independently.

She never married and had no children. After the deaths of her parents and her brother, her closest relatives were her cousin Vicente Lozano, who was 78 in 2026, and his wife, who lived outside Madrid. El País described Vicente as being, in reality, like a brother to her. Her great-niece Vanessa Losada, a chef, was inside the flat on the day of the eviction and saved family photographs and keepsakes. Maricarmen came to regard the members of the Madrid Tenants' Union who supported her as family. She had a recognised disability of 50 per cent.

Her lease was an old rent-controlled contract from 1956 that passed from her father to her mother and then to her. When the building was sold, the property eventually passed to Urbagestión Desarrollo e Inversión, which sued to recover it, arguing that the contract had expired. A first-instance court sided with her, but the Audiencia Provincial de Madrid ruled that a second transfer of an old lease could not last for life under the 1994 Urban Leases Act. The Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal on 13 December 2023. Urbagestión sought 2,650 euros a month in rent, later 1,650 euros, against the roughly 500 euros she paid. Around 2022 she asked the Madrid Tenants' Union for help, and in June 2026 the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asked Spain to suspend the eviction or provide adequate alternative housing. The housing ministry, an anonymous donor and the pianist James Rhodes all said they had offered ways to keep her in the flat.

After three earlier dates were suspended or postponed, the eviction went ahead on 23 September 2026. Hundreds of people, including the singer Ana Belén and the actors Carlos Bardem and Juan Diego Botto, gathered outside from the previous evening. Riot police cleared protesters so the court officials could enter, and shortly before 1pm Maricarmen was carried out on a SAMUR stretcher and taken to the Gregorio Marañón hospital. The Government Delegation in Madrid later opened an internal review of some police actions.

Her eviction turned a private legal dispute into a national movement. Protests began in at least a dozen cities within hours. On 26 September a march in Madrid ended with a protest camp in the Puerta del Sol under the slogan "Ni una Maricarmen más", widely compared with the 15-M movement of 2011. On 29 September the government approved two housing decree-laws, nicknamed the "decreto Maricarmen" by the press, extending protections against evictions and changing rules on lease renewals. When Congress rejected them on 2 October, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a snap general election for 29 November 2026 and re-approved the decrees. Unions called a general strike over housing for 11 November 2026. The tenants' union said her case marked a turning point in the history of the country.

Maricarmen spoke publicly about wanting to stay in her neighbourhood rather than move to a care home far from it. "No me quiero ir" (I don't want to leave), she said from the flat before the eviction. From hospital she urged supporters to keep up the struggle, telling them to fight and defend what is theirs.

The case became politically charged. Government ministers blamed property funds and the parties that had voted down earlier anti-eviction measures, while the People's Party said those measures would not have stopped this eviction because her lease dated from 1956, and accused the government of using her case. Urbagestión rejected being called a vulture company and said it had only exercised rights confirmed by the courts. Some conservative commentators argued the coverage was being used for political ends, while others contrasted the attention her case received with that given to Olga Matute, an evicted woman in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat who died by suicide earlier in September 2026.

On 28 September her representatives and Urbagestión agreed, through mediation by Madrid's municipal housing company, on a new eight-year lease with rent capped at 30 per cent of her net income, about 500 euros a month. She accepted it on 29 September and was due to return home once discharged. Her condition worsened unexpectedly on the morning of 7 October 2026 and she was sedated. She died at about 7.30pm at the Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid, with her cousin Vicente Lozano and members of the tenants' union close by, on the day she had been due to sign the new contract. No cause of death was made public. The Madrid Tenants' Union announced her death, and that night people held a candlelit vigil and a minute of silence in the Puerta del Sol before marching towards Congress. Pedro Sánchez, Alberto Núñez Feijóo and several ministers sent condolences. A tribute is planned for 2 November 2026, the day she would have turned 88.