Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction fueled Spain’s housing protests, has died.
The Madrid tenants’ union announced her death on Wednesday, confirming that Abascal had been hospitalized for severe anxiety and exhaustion since police and social workers removed her by stretcher from her home of more than 70 years on September 23. She never left the hospital.
Thousands responded to the news by marching from Puerta del Sol toward parliament, chanting: “This is not a death. It’s a murder!” A cause of death was not announced. Demonstrators also gathered in Barcelona, and trade unions called a nationwide general strike over housing issues for November 11.
“This was a completely avoidable death that symbolizes the drama that is the housing crisis in Spain,” said Dario Gomez, 36, at the Madrid march.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who had already called an early election for November 29 after parliament rejected eviction-curbing decrees last week, posted on X to lament Abascal’s passing. “A hug as well to all of us who feel this loss as our own today,” he wrote.
The housing crisis had become Sanchez’s chosen political battleground, a shift from his government’s troubles over a migrant crisis in Ceuta and corruption cases touching his Socialist Party and family. Rising rents and home shortages had driven activists to camp in Puerta del Sol even before Abascal’s death turned grievance into fury.
The opposition leader pushed back against any political use of the moment. Alberto Nunez Feijoo, head of the centre-right People’s Party, wrote on X that Abascal’s death shouldn’t be politicized. “No campaigns, no political parties, no other interests here,” he said. “In the face of someone’s death, respect is all that matters.”
Abascal’s eviction came after an investment fund purchased her house near Madrid’s Retiro Park. Her lawyer later secured an eight-year agreement allowing her return at her prior rent, which she had planned to sign once recovered. She never got the chance.
A neighbor who knew her traced her resilience to living through Spain’s Franco dictatorship, which ended in 1975. “She was a fighter, with very clear ideas, a somewhat broad sense of justice, and, above all, perhaps a social conscience and ideas about solidarity,” he said.
The tenants’ union issued a statement framing her legacy as inseparable from the struggle itself. “Now, following her passing, we are left with the example of the fight she waged and the legacy Maricarmen has left behind,” the union wrote. “And, above all, we will honor what she always asked of us: ‘Fight, keep fighting for what is yours.'”
Guillermo Ruiz, 31, an audiovisual specialist documenting the mass march, voiced doubt that political systems would respond. “The best homage we can pay to her is to continue the fight, continue to mobilise, fight for a dignified life and that what happened to her doesn’t happen to anyone else,” he said.
Spain’s general strike over housing issues is scheduled for November 11.