María del Carmen Abascal, symbol of Spain’s housing protests, dies aged 87

Maricarmen’s eviction from Madrid apartment after over seven decades set off wave of protests against housing crisis

‘Now is the moment’: housing activists at Madrid encampment pin wary hopes on Spain’s early election

María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old whose eviction set off a nationwide wave of protests against Spain’s housing crisis, has died.

News of her death came two weeks after Maricarmen, as she had come to be known across Spain, was evicted from the Madrid apartment where she had lived for more than seven decades.

The pensioner, whose apartment had been purchased by an investment firm who sought to hike her rent by 230%, swiftly became a symbol of the many left behind by Spain’s surging housing market.

Scenes of the eviction, which saw police use rounds of teargas as they carried out the order, made headlines across Spain. The shocking images, showing Abascal being forcibly removed from her home on a stretcher, flanked by protesters and police, swiftly crystallised into anger.

About 10,000 people took to the streets of Madrid hours later, wielding signs such as “Shame” and “We’re all Maricarmen”. From Spain’s north to the south, people poured into plazas to protest the suffering wrought by rents that had soared 80% in the span of a decade while house prices had climbed 63%.

From the hospital where she was being treated for severe exhaustion, Abascal cheered on the fledgling movement. “I would like to be there with you all,” she said in a video shot from her hospital bed. “But I’m not that lucky. So from here, I ask you all for courage and to fight and defend what is yours.”

As encampments began springing up across the country, the investment firm that bought Abascal’s home said she could return. The deal did little to quell the anger that had boiled over in the wake of the eviction.

This week the wave of outrage led the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to call a snap general election after rightwing and far-right parties voted down two emergency decrees his government had proposed to address the housing crisis.

The Madrid tenants’ union said the solution had come too late for the octogenarian. “This was a completely preventable situation following an agonising ordeal,” it said in a statement announcing that Abascal had died in hospital, reportedly hours before she was due to sign a new lease with the investment firm that had evicted her.

“The events triggered by the injustice of her eviction undoubtedly mark a turning point in the history of this country: massive demonstrations, encampments in the squares, an early election, and the call for a general strike,” it added. “The housing debate is at the center of it all, but the cost of getting to this point has been too high.”

Sánchez offered his condolences to Abascal’s family and friends. “A hug also to everyone who’s feeling this loss today as their own,” he wrote on social media. “Rest in peace.”

Spain’s health minister, Mónica García, said Abascal’s plight had “served to awaken awareness across all of Spain, lighting a fuse that cannot be put out”, and adding that her “ dignity and courage ” had shown the way.

The Podemos MEP and former equalities minister Irene Montero was more blunt. “This isn’t a death; it’s a murder,” she wrote on social media. “Such bloody anger. Thank you for fighting, Maricarmen.”

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the conservative People’s party (PP), which voted against last week’s emergency housing measures, also offered his condolences.

“No campaigning, no political parties, no partisan ends, no more bricks in the wall,” he wrote on social media. “When a person dies there should be nothing but respect.”

Her death came a day after Sánchez’s cabinet approved two new housing decrees intended to “maintain the spirit” of the two previous decrees that were voted down in parliament last week by the PP, the far-right Vox party and the rightwing Catalan pro-independence Junts party.

The 21 measures include facilitating renting or buying a new home; extending eviction protections for vulnerable residents; regulating room rentals; imposing a new tax on seasonal rentals; prohibiting speculative real estate purchases; and granting tax breaks to property owners and tenants who pay on time.

With the lower and upper houses of parliament dissolved following the calling of the snap election, the decrees will be voted on by the permanent council of congress, a special council that operates when parliament is not in session.

The body’s 69 members are distributed proportionally among the various parliamentary groups to reflect the composition of the lower chamber, meaning Sánchez will probably have enough support to get at least one of the decrees passed.

In the heart of Madrid, where campaigners have set up a giant protest camp , news of Abascal’s death was met with a moment of silence. Soon after, hundreds marched from the camp to the country’s parliament chanting: “Maricarmen lives on, the fight continues.”