An 87-year-old woman whose forced removal from her Madrid apartment became the flashpoint for Spain's growing housing crisis will be allowed to return to the home she has occupied for seven decades, her attorney confirmed Tuesday.
María del Carmen Abascal, known throughout Spain simply as "Maricarmen," has remained hospitalized since last Wednesday, when authorities carried her out of her apartment on a stretcher to execute an eviction order. Her lawyer, Beatriz Duro, told The Associated Press that her client has reached an agreement with the property owner that will permit her to move back in once doctors discharge her from medical care.
"She is very happy," Duro said of Abascal, who has become a household name in Spain virtually overnight.
The terms of the settlement cap Abascal's monthly rent at 30 percent of her income. In practical terms, that means she will not pay more than the 500 euros — roughly $570 — she was paying before the eviction proceeding began. The agreement resolves, at least for now, a standoff that had drawn intense public scrutiny to the apartment in Madrid's upscale Retiro district, where Abascal had lived since the 1950s.
The eviction itself unfolded rapidly. On Wednesday of last week, officials arrived at the apartment and removed Abascal, who required medical transport. She was taken to a hospital, where she has remained under care, and the incident was captured in images and accounts that circulated widely across Spanish media and social platforms. The sight of an elderly woman being carried from her longtime home struck a nerve in a country where housing costs have surged far faster than wages in recent years, particularly in major urban centers like Madrid and Barcelona.
By the weekend, outrage had boiled over into the streets. On Saturday, tens of thousands of demonstrators converged on Puerta del Sol, the central plaza in Madrid that has long served as a gathering point for political expression in Spain. According to reporting from the scene, protesters carried signs demanding stronger legal protections for renters and criticized what they described as a system that prioritizes property investors over vulnerable tenants. The encampment in the plaza persisted for four days, becoming the symbolic center of a broader movement against evictions and housing speculation.
The scale of the response appears to have forced the government's hand. On Tuesday, the coalition led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's Socialists unveiled a package of housing measures aimed at addressing the crisis that Abascal's case had come to symbolize. Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez presented the initiatives at the presidential palace, framing them as a direct response to the public outcry.
The centerpiece of the government's decree extends protections against eviction for vulnerable Spaniards through 2030, lengthening a safeguard that had been set to expire sooner. The decree also introduces regulation of room rentals, a sector that has expanded rapidly as a workaround to traditional tenancy rules, and imposes a new tax on seasonal or short-term rentals, which critics argue have siphoned housing stock away from long-term residents and driven up prices in tourist-heavy neighborhoods.
Perhaps most striking is a provision banning what the government describes as "speculative real estate purchases by vulture funds" through 2028. The measure targets investment funds that buy up residential properties in bulk, often with the goal of converting them to higher-yield uses. However, significant questions remain about how the government intends to define such funds and enforce the prohibition. The full text of the decree has not yet been made public, and officials did not specify the exact size or structure of the new tax on seasonal rentals.
Beyond restrictions, the package includes incentives intended to encourage landlords to rent to low-income tenants through tax breaks, as well as interest-free loans for families purchasing their first home. It also pledges to protect existing public housing and to promote the construction of additional public units, a longer-term strategy aimed at expanding the supply of affordable homes in a market where demand has consistently outpaced availability.
Rodríguez credited the public pressure campaign for pushing the measures forward. In remarks reported by the AP, she thanked "the citizen movement," naming Abascal specifically, along with "the thousands of people in the streets" whose mobilization had made housing policy a political priority. The acknowledgment underscored the unusual dynamic in which a single eviction case had elevated a structural national problem to the top of the government's agenda.
Whether the decree will be enough to calm the protesters remains an open question. The measures, while ambitious in scope, still require detailed implementation, and some of the most impactful provisions — including the ban on speculative purchases and the seasonal rental tax — lack the specificity that would allow observers to assess their likely effectiveness. Activists who spent days camped in Puerta del Sol have indicated that their movement predates Abascal's case and reflects grievances that extend well beyond any single eviction.
For Abascal herself, the resolution is personal and immediate. After seven decades in the same Retiro apartment, she will return to a home that had been legally stripped from her, under terms that preserve her financial stability. Her lawyer's brief statement — that she is "very happy" — offered a rare note of relief in a saga that has otherwise laid bare the tensions between property rights, elderly tenants, and a housing market under mounting strain.
Her case now stands as both a victory for grassroots mobilization and a test case for Spain's evolving housing policy. As she awaits discharge from the hospital and prepares to return to the neighborhood she has called home since the 1950s, the broader debate over eviction protections, rental regulation, and housing affordability continues to unfold across the country — with the government's newly announced measures facing scrutiny from both housing advocates who want stronger action and property owners who warn of unintended consequences.
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