‘Thank you for changing Spain’: Madrid’s Sol protest camp mourns Maricarmen
The eviction of the 87-year-old, who died on Wednesday, was the last such case that many Spaniards were willing to accept
When news of the death of Maricarmen Abascal began to spread through the protest camp in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, many at first dismissed it as a cruel joke. But as the reports gained traction and mobile phones lit up inside and outside the tents, disbelief gave way to shock, and then anger. Meanwhile, as birds sense a storm before it breaks, police officers were already taking up positions, alert to what the death of such an emblematic figure might mean. Sirens never bring good news.
“They murdered her!” was the immediate conclusion. “They told me, ‘Maricarmen’s dead,’ and I replied without thinking: ‘Give me a break.’ You don’t believe it until you ask yourself why you wouldn’t believe it — she was an elderly woman, hospitalized, evicted from her home. She wasn’t even able to go back there,” says Rober, a young man lighting a small candle at the Sol encampment. “Be careful, damn it,” complains one of his friends: people are crowding together so much in some areas that some end up stepping on the candles.
The news came as a crushing blow while many activists were busy inside the camp, tending to the day-to-day needs of this improvised community. It landed with such force that, for a few seconds, an eerie silence fell over the encampment. That silence was soon broken by shouting and the hurried organization of marches and vigils. By 10:30 p.m., calm had returned, along with the peaceful yet stubborn resistance to the tourist spectacle that has come to surround the protest.
“I’m sure these people,” says Xabi, from Santiago, gesturing toward the onlookers, “heard about Maricarmen’s death and came down here to take photos, like they were at a zoo.”
After 10 p.m., people sat on the ground or on cardboard boxes; groups of youngsters gathered in circles lit by candlelight, while others continued working to keep the protest camp going, securing tarpaulins to protect against the cold and rain. New protest signs were being made, updated to reflect Maricarmen’s death. And around the vast protest camp that has taken over the heart of Madrid, dozens of people sat beside candles that ringed almost the entirety of Puerta del Sol.
The scene is striking in its stillness. It is as if time has stopped around those small flames: no shouting, no chants, only a deep and almost tangible sense of shock.
A short distance away, up Carrera de San Jerónimo Street, a demonstration gathers outside Spain’s Congress of Deputies, advancing only as far as the police allow. Protesters wave red flags and chant slogans: “No, no, there is no other way,” “I’d be ashamed to evict a family,” and “I’d be ashamed to be a police officer.” Officers stand guard beside their vans as cameras and reporters swarm around them.
The crowd spans a wide range of ages; it isn’t just people in their twenties. There are many older people here too, visibly shaken and deeply affected. César, from Pontevedra, says his mother is worried: there may not just one Maricarmen, there could be many. He reassures her over the phone. “If they evict another elderly woman after this, Spain will be up in flames. At least we’ve made some progress.”
Nearby, a man in his sixties wearing a grey polo shirt watches the crowd with tears in his eyes. “You have to stay alive,” he says quietly, without joining the chants.
Blue flashing lights and sirens repeatedly cut through the night and the traffic. Around midnight, a taxi driver voices his frustration: “When it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
Shortly after the news broke, several people gathered on Sainz de Baranda Street in Madrid, outside the building from which Maricarmen had been evicted on a stretcher, lighting candles around a tree and leaving handwritten messages and signs. “Thank you for changing Spain,” read one of them.
Many felt compelled to come and bear witness to what had unfolded over these whirlwind 15 days, during which an 87-year-old woman upended Spain’s social and political landscape. Without doing anything. Without waving flags or delivering speeches. Without ever setting out to become the face or symbol of anything.
She was, in theory, the victim of an eviction like so many others. But she was not. It is worth asking why, beyond the shameful, almost inhuman circumstances of her case, her age and frail health, Maricarmen became the last woman whose eviction Spanish society was willing, however reluctantly, to tolerate before it erupted in protest.
It seemed to have less to do with Maricarmen herself than with a society pushed to the brink, fed up with a housing market that is undermining the future of millions of young people and forcing families to spend an ever larger share of their income on keeping a roof over their heads.
Gustavo, a 37-year-old Madrid resident, believes Maricarmen’s case was the tipping point for many people whose patience had long been exhausted. The image of a frail 87-year-old woman being forcibly removed from the home she had lived in since she was 17 was something many people had yet to witness. Boundaries that had once seemed untouchable suddenly dissolved. It was young people who had been leading the protests over the impossibility of finding affordable housing. But it was an elderly woman who brought people into the streets.
A small altar has sprung up in Puerta del Sol, opposite the regional government headquarters, where people leave flowers and light candles beside a photograph of Maricarmen. Some of the young protesters are in tears.
“I’d rather not tell you my name,” says a young man with his face covered in piercings. “But tell your paper there won’t be any more Maricármens.”
It’s past midnight, and the city center remains in a state of turmoil. Few things illustrate the fragility of the social equilibrium more starkly, or more tragically, than asking someone two weeks ago about a quiet resident of Madrid’s Sainz de Baranda neighborhood. “Who?” would have been the reply.
There are few better, and none more devastating, proofs of the precarious social balance than asking someone two weeks ago about a quiet neighbour from Sainz de Baranda in Madrid — “Who?” they would have answered. That is why this is not just the story of the past 15 days, but of the more than 15 years that led up to them.
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