María del Carmen Abascal, an 87-year-old who became a symbol of Spain’s housing crisis after the police tore down her door to evict her, urged Spaniards in a video released on Friday to “fight” for their homes.
“I wasn’t able to defend my home, but I did fight so that others can learn to fight for theirs,” said Ms. Abascal, speaking from a bed at a Madrid hospital where she was admitted on Wednesday after the eviction because of health problems.
Ms. Abascal, known as Maricarmen, urged Spaniards to demonstrate in Madrid on Saturday afternoon against evictions. “Please, fight,” she said in the video, which was recorded on Thursday and distributed on social media by a tenants’ union on Friday.
The union, which is organizing the protest on Saturday, said that Ms. Abascal would remain in the hospital for a few days after suffering an anxiety episode after the eviction but that her condition was “not serious.”
Ms. Abascal’s case has struck a nerve among Spaniards fed up with rising housing costs, drawing thousands of protesters into the streets of cities across the country and piling pressure on Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s left-leaning prime minister, who had promised to make housing a priority for his government.
Here’s what to know about Ms. Abascal and Spain’s housing problem.
Why is Ms. Abascal now a face of the crisis?
Ms. Abascal shot to prominence on Wednesday when the police dragged away activists who had barricaded themselves outside the Madrid home where she had lived for 70 years and then broke down her door.
She was evicted after years of legal battles with Urbagestión, the real estate company that owns the apartment.
Ms. Abascal’s father acquired the rental lease when the family moved there in the 1950s, according to her lawyer, Beatriz Duro. He passed it on to his wife, who in turn passed the rent-controlled lease in 2005 to Ms. Abascal, who was living in the apartment when it was bought in 2020 by Urbagestión, Ms. Duro said.
According to Ms. Duro, Ms. Abascal was evicted because Urbagestión had raised her rent from about $500 to $1,900 a month, far more than she could afford on her monthly pension of around $1,500.
Urbagestión did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement carried by the Spanish news media, the company said that it had evicted Ms. Abascal because her lease had expired and that it had never tried to raise her rent.
The case reached the Spanish Supreme Court, which ruled in March in favor of Urbagestión.
The images of her eviction shook many, bringing renewed attention to the housing crisis, an issue consistently ranking as Spaniards’ top concern.
“We’re all Maricarmen,” read one demonstrator’s banner on Wednesday.
Why is housing such a major issue?
Spain has a housing shortfall of about 755,000 homes, according to the Bank of Spain — a major problem in a country of roughly 50 million.
Experts say that the problem has been exacerbated by sluggish construction, the arrival of more than three million immigrants since the pandemic and a surge in tourism — a record 100 million visitors are projected to visit Spain this year.
That has allowed landlords to drive up prices, while wage stagnation over the past three decades has made those prices ever more unaffordable. In Madrid, residents need roughly 18 years of annual salary to buy an apartment, according to CaixaBank Research.
“All of this is creating the perfect storm of sorts: high demand and very low supply,” said Jorge Galindo, director of the Esade Center for Economic Policy, a think tank in Madrid.
Evictions have steadily declined since the eurozone crisis, to about 25,000 in 2025, from around 68,000 in 2014. But evictions remain politically delicate for the government, especially because Mr. Sánchez promised before taking office to end them.
The claim of a sharp rent increase faced by Ms. Abascal and the role of a real estate company in her eviction have angered Mr. Sánchez’s left-wing base. Many of them blame private investment firms for driving up housing costs in Spain.
The situation compounds a broader political crisis for Mr. Sánchez, whose associates and relatives face several corruption accusations and convictions.
What is the government going to do?
Facing more protests this weekend, Mr. Sánchez has promised that his government will provide a response to what he called a “social tragedy.”
Mr. Sánchez’s minority government could send a bill to Parliament as early as next week that would make evictions more difficult, freeze some rents and speed up some housing projects, but it is unclear whether such a measure would pass.
The Spanish news media reported on Friday that Junts, a small right-wing Catalan separatist party that is not part of the government but that sometimes votes with Mr. Sánchez to pass legislation, was open to supporting the measure.
A similar bill was defeated in February by Junts and the main opposition parties, who said that the legislation would harm small landlords.
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