Maricarmen Abascal, whose eviction sparked Spain housing protests, dies at 87

Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction from her Madrid home sparked housing protests across Spain, died on Wednesday, October 7, Madrid’s tenants’ union announced. Her death comes as Spain prepares for an early election in which housing has become a prominent issue.

The union said Abascal died that day and described her case as a turning point in the country’s history, according to Deutsche Welle. That description is the union’s assessment of the protests that followed her eviction. The available reports do not state a cause of death.

How Maricarmen Abascal’s eviction led to protests

Abascal was evicted on September 23 from the Madrid home where she had lived all her life, according to Deutsche Welle and RTÉ. Both reports say she was carried out on a stretcher. They say the real-estate company that owned the apartment had sharply increased the rent, but neither gives the previous or new amount.

She was hospitalized with exhaustion after the eviction, Deutsche Welle and RTÉ report. The reports say an agreement was subsequently reached with the apartment’s owners that would allow her to return home. They do not establish when she returned or give the agreement’s terms. Nothing in the reporting establishes that the eviction or her hospitalization caused her death.

Demonstrations followed the eviction across Spain. France 24 reported from Madrid on the protests, including an encampment in one of the city’s main squares. RTÉ reported that hundreds of people camped in Puerta del Sol. Their protests drew attention to the difficulty of securing and keeping a home amid the country’s housing crisis.

Housing measures and Spain’s early election

According to RTÉ, the protest movement pressed Spain’s minority leftist government to put forward urgent housing measures. The proposals it described included tighter restrictions on evictions and the automatic renewal of tenant contracts. Lawmakers rejected housing reforms the previous week, RTÉ reported, before Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called an early election.

Sánchez set the election for November 29, Deutsche Welle and RTÉ report; it had originally been due in 2027. Housing is expected to feature in the campaign, RTÉ reported. The parliamentary rejection and election call are political developments that followed the protests; the available reports do not establish that Abascal’s case alone determined either decision.

Sánchez offered condolences to those mourning Abascal in a social-media post, according to Deutsche Welle and RTÉ. Territorial Policy Minister Ángel Víctor Torres said she had come to symbolize the difficulties faced by families, older people and younger people trying to obtain or keep housing. Their statements underline how widely her case had entered the national debate.

The debate has also reached Spain’s trade unions. UGT and CCOO announced a nationwide general strike over housing issues for November 11, according to Deutsche Welle and RTÉ. They called for better wages, decent housing and price controls in response to inflation’s effect on purchasing power. The announcement sets out a planned action; the strike had not taken place at the time of Abascal’s death.

What remains unclear about Abascal’s death

The death announcement in the available reports is attributed to Madrid’s tenants’ union. No cause of death is given, and the reports do not include a separate family statement or official record. Her earlier hospitalization and the union’s criticism of the eviction process are part of the documented sequence, but they cannot establish why she died.

There are also limits to what is known about the tenancy dispute itself. The reports identify neither the apartment owner nor the rent before and after the increase. They say an agreement allowed Abascal to return home without setting out its conditions. Those gaps matter when assessing the union’s account of what could have been avoided.

The next scheduled political steps are the unions’ November 11 strike and the November 29 election. For now, the confirmed development is the union’s announcement that Abascal died on October 7, after an eviction that prompted demonstrations and intensified Spain’s housing debate.