Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old Spanish woman whose dramatic eviction last month sparked mass housing protests that led to the announcement of an early election, has died, the Madrid tenants' union said, as ‌thousands demonstrated over her death

🇪🇸 Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old whose eviction from her Madrid home of 70+ years set off Spain's mass housing protests, has died. She had been in hospital with severe anxiety and exhaustion since police and social workers carried her out on a stretcher last month, after an investment fund bought her building. Days later, her lawyer secured a deal letting her return home at her old rent, but she never got well enough to sign it. Thousands marched toward parliament after the news, chanting "This is not a death. It's a murder!" Source: Reuters / Writer: Julie

María del Carmen Abascal ("Maricarmen"), an 87-year-old pensioner in Spain, became a national symbol of the country's housing crisis after she was forcibly evicted from her Madrid apartment of more than 70 years... At 87 years old, María del Carmen Abascal had one final wish. She wanted to die peacefully in the Madrid apartment where she had spent almost her entire life. Instead, she was carried out on a stretcher while police held back the neighbors trying to save her home. Maricarmen, as everyone called her, had lived in that apartment since 1956. Her parents had died there. Its rooms held seventy years of family photographs, familiar furniture and memories she had carefully preserved. She had worked for decades as a secretary, retired in 1998 and continued paying her rent. But after an investment company acquired the property, a dispute over her old rental agreement threatened everything. The owners wanted a much higher rent. Maricarmen, living on a modest pension, could not afford it. For years, she fought to stay. On September 23, 2026, the eviction finally happened. Frail and using a wheelchair, she was removed from her home as protesters gathered outside. She was taken directly to hospital. Then something extraordinary happened. Thousands of strangers marched through Madrid carrying her photograph. Demonstrations spread across Spain. Young people camped in public squares, demanding protections for tenants like her. From her hospital bed, Maricarmen watched the support gathering around her. She recorded messages thanking the protesters and urging them to keep fighting. She had become the face of a national movement. And finally, under enormous public pressure, the property company agreed to let her return home. After years of legal battles, she had a chance to go back to the rooms she loved. But Maricarmen never made it. On October 7, just two weeks after being evicted, she died in hospital. She was 87. Her death prompted vigils, condolences and renewed demonstrations. The woman who had spent her final years fighting simply to remain in her apartment had inspired thousands of people to stand up for others facing eviction. The agreement to restore her home had come too late. Maricarmen lived long enough to see an entire community rally around her, to hear that strangers cared and to know that her struggle had reached people across Spain. But she never got to walk through her own front door again. And that may be the most heartbreaking part of her story. She was never asking to become a symbol of anything. She only wanted to spend her remaining days at home.

The 87-year-old woman known as "Maricarmen" became the face of the struggle to fix Spain’s broken housing market. Her death turned her into a political martyr.