Wheelchair-bound elderly woman dies after being evicted from apartment she lived in for 70 years; Spain's housing crisis ignites political storm

María del Carmen Abascal, 87, known to Spaniards as "Maricarmen," died at a Madrid hospital on October 7. It was less than two weeks since she had been carried out on a stretcher from the apartment where she had lived for seventy years. According to NPR, her death was confirmed by her lawyer Beatriz Duró to the Cadena Ser radio station; Duró did not disclose a specific cause of death, saying only that she and activists "are heartbroken."

On the morning of September 23, police sealed off streets in Madrid; after protesters were dispersed, Maricarmen, in her wheelchair, was lifted onto a stretcher and carried out of her home. Photographs of her were broadcast on television screens across the country, and thousands of residents in Madrid and several other cities subsequently took to the streets demanding a government response to the housing crisis. Her lawyer Duró wrote in a statement: "Maricarmen's case drew media attention and reached the whole world, but what remains for us is the shameful violence that such evictions embody, and the toll they can take on a person's health."

According to data from the Spanish real estate website Idealista, the national average rent in Spain has nearly doubled over the past decade. The Spanish government itself acknowledges that 26% of renting households across the country spend 40% of their income on rent and utilities, far above the EU average of 18%. The apartment where Maricarmen lived was reclaimed by a real estate company with the intention of re-letting it at a higher price — a logic that has long been commonplace in Madrid, where property prices have soared. Immense public pressure ultimately forced the company to agree to let the elderly woman return home, but it was too late. The Madrid Tenants' Union stated bluntly: "Although a historic agreement was eventually reached for her to return home, the solution came too late — this is a tragedy that could have been entirely avoided."

Maricarmen's death has accelerated a political earthquake already brewing. The government led by Prime Minister Sánchez announced on Monday an early general election for November 29 after failing to push an emergency housing bill through parliament. Spanish unions have announced a general strike for next month. According to NPR, Sánchez has placed the housing issue at the center of the campaign, hoping that the wave of national grief will inject new energy into the Socialist Party and help him form a new government after the election. The leader of the opposition People's Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, posted on X offering condolences to Maricarmen's family and stressing that no one's death should be used as a political chip.

At a protest encampment in Madrid's Puerta del Sol, 22-year-old Eugenio Merchior voiced what many felt: "Maricarmen only wanted to die in her own home — she asked for nothing else." He accused those who evicted her of having "killed her" and said he wanted those responsible to face trial. Itziar López, a 32-year-old psychologist, told The Associated Press: "The greatest sadness is that she was the origin of all this change, yet didn't live to see the result."

Maricarmen spent most of her life in that Madrid apartment, initially living with her parents and brother, later serving for many years as a secretary on the board of a pharmaceutical company, retiring in 1998. According to El País, both her parents died in that dwelling; when she was taken to the hospital, almost all she carried with her were a few black-and-white family photographs. Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez posted on X: "I am deeply saddened by Maricarmen's passing, and offer my condolences to those who accompanied her and fought for her until the very end."

The reason Maricarmen's plight swiftly ignited a nationwide social movement is not merely that it was a tragedy. The problem lies here: when a real estate company can legally evict an 87-year-old lifelong tenant in order to extract a higher rent, and no majority in parliament can stop it; when the government itself admits that more than a quarter of renters spend forty percent of their income on rent and utilities, yet the legislative machinery cannot deliver even a single emergency housing bill — that structural failure became impossible to look away from the moment Maricarmen was lifted onto a stretcher.

Whether her death will translate into substantive housing reform beyond symbolic meaning, or be swallowed up by the November 29 election campaign, remains unknown.