Timeline of the Maricarmen case: From four eviction attempts to a housing movement that shook Spain
The 87-year-old woman was evicted two weeks ago and died this Wednesday at Gregorio Marañón Hospital
Maricarmen Abascal faced four eviction attempts, and the last one succeeded. It happened two weeks ago. The 87-year-old woman left her Retiro home in a wheelchair; she had lived there for almost her entire life. Once outside, she was helped onto a stretcher and taken to Gregorio Marañón Hospital. She died there on Wednesday.
Her eviction sparked protests across Spain that ultimately led to the protest encampment in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square, the defeat of two government housing decrees in Parliament and the calling of an early general election. This is the story of how one eviction case became a national symbol.
1956. Maricarmen’s father rents a sixth-floor apartment at 46 Alcalde Sainz de Baranda Street, in Madrid’s Retiro district. After his death, the lease is transferred to her mother, who had not been listed as a tenant on the original contract because Franco-era laws did not permit it.
2005-2018. Maricarmen’s mother dies, and the lease is transferred for a second time. By then 66, Maricarmen remains in the apartment, and the owners raise no objections as she continues to pay the roughly €500 ($560) monthly rent and associated charges. Years later, the approximately 90-square-meter flat is purchased by a real estate company, which offers to sell the property to her for around €250,000 ($280,000). Unable to afford it, Maricarmen decides to stay on as a tenant.
2018. Urbagestión Desarrollo e Inversión S.L., a company with offices in Madrid and Valladolid, purchases the apartment. For two years, nothing changes. Maricarmen continues paying her rent and utility bills. The company’s owners, Ricardo Alonso and Fernando Alonso, deal in all kinds of real estate assets, including pharmacies, both in the Spanish capital and elsewhere in the country.
2020. The company unexpectedly informs her that she has to leave the apartment. “Everyone assumed, including Maricarmen herself, that the lease was watertight and perfectly valid,” her lawyer, Beatriz Duro, told EL PAÍS. The owners argue that the lease, a long-standing rent-controlled contract signed only by Maricarmen’s father, had first been transferred to her mother and then to her daughter, and that Spain’s Urban Leases Act limits a second transfer to two years unless a disability of at least 65% can be proven. This marks the beginning of a lengthy legal battle.
2020-2021. The case first comes before a lower court, which rules in Maricarmen’s favor, finding that the lease transfer was already established and that the company had effectively accepted it. Urbagestión appeals.
2022. The Provincial Court reaches the opposite conclusion. In a June 30 ruling, it holds that the second transfer of the lease is not permitted and that the contract is therefore invalid. Duro files an appeal before Spain’s Supreme Court.
2023-2024. The Supreme Court rejects the appeal, making the Provincial Court’s ruling final. Maricarmen stops paying rent and contacts the Tenants’ Union for the first time. Urbagestión offers her alternative accommodation, with a rent of around €1,600 ($1,790) a month. Maricarmen receives a pension of €1,400 ($1,570). Eviction notices begin to arrive.
2025. In autumn, the first of four eviction attempts takes place; it is suspended after a large neighborhood mobilization.
Summer 2026. Two more eviction attempts follow, one in early June and another at the end of the month. Both are postponed once again due to public pressure. Between the two, the United Nations calls for the evictions to be halted. The neighborhood and the Tenants’ Union mobilize. Maricarmen’s face appears in newspapers and on television. She encourages people to keep fighting and believes they will be able to stop the fourth eviction attempt, scheduled for September.
September 23, 2026. The fourth eviction attempt proves to be the final one. The day before, hundreds of people spend the night on the street, ready to try to stop the riot police. Maricarmen waits in her apartment, surrounded by her belongings, already packed into boxes. Her physical condition has deteriorated, and she now has to use a wheelchair. At around 1 p.m., she is removed from the flat and taken by stretcher to the Gregorio Marañón Hospital. That same afternoon, a mass protest is held outside the penthouse apartment that had been purchased through an opaque deal by the Madrid regional government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
September 25. Urbagestión, which until then had refused to negotiate, offers to allow Maricarmen to return to her home and calls on the Madrid City Council to step in through one of its municipal housing programs.
September 26. Tens of thousands of people march through the streets of Madrid in protest at Maricarmen’s eviction. The demonstrations end shortly before nightfall, and some of the protesters go to Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square, where they pitch the first tents of what would become the now historic housing protest encampment.
September 27. The encampment continues to grow, with more than 1,200 tents by now, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announces that the government is working against the clock to push through a housing decree. Four days of last-minute negotiations then begin with the parties that supported his investiture, particularly the Catalan separatist party Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia). In the end, the government decides to present two separate decrees.
September 28. Urbagestión, Maricarmen’s lawyer, the Tenants’ Union, and the Madrid City Council meet for four hours. At 9 p.m., they reach an agreement, and the company accepts that Maricarmen can return home under an eight-year lease at a rent similar to her previous one.
September 30. Junts per Catalunya confirms at the last minute that it will vote against both decrees.
October 1. The two housing decrees come to a vote in the Congress of Deputies. They fail to pass. The Popular Party (PP), Vox, and Junts vote against them, and Sánchez announces a period of reflection over the weekend. The Tenants’ Union calls for a general strike.
October 2. Urbagestión signs the rental contract and hands over the keys to the apartment.
October 5. Sánchez announces a snap general election for Sunday, November 29. Spain’s two main trade unions, UGT and CCOO, confirm that they will join the general strike, scheduled for November 11.
October 7. Maricarmen Abascal dies in hospital at the age of 87. On October 8, she was going to sign the new lease to move back into her home, and on November 2, she would have turned 88.
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