Maricarmen Abascal Returns Home Amid Spain’s Housing Crisis

What changed

Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old wheelchair user, will be able to return to her Madrid apartment after an agreement with her landlords. Her attorney, Beatriz Duro, said the new rent will be roughly what Abascal paid before her monthly bill reportedly jumped from about €500 to €2,650.

Abascal had lived there for 71 years. Her eviction, after she was carried from the building on a stretcher, triggered protests across Spain and turned one apartment into a national symbol.

Why it matters

The agreement gives Abascal her home back, but it does not settle the problem that pushed her out. Protests continued in Madrid, Barcelona, Vigo and Malaga, with demonstrators calling for rent freezes, open-ended leases and stronger protection against evictions.

Madrid’s Puerta del Sol filled with about 100 tents, while tens of thousands marched through the capital. The message was blunt: a housing system that can make a long-term tenant face a five-fold rent increase feels less like a market than a trap.

The pressure now falls on Spain’s government. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s administration is working on new housing measures, but parliamentary support is uncertain, and a similar initiative has already failed. Informed speculation points to a difficult path: if lawmakers cannot build durable support, Abascal’s return may remain a powerful exception rather than a model others can rely on.

The underlying numbers explain why the protests have lasted. Average asking rent per square meter has nearly doubled in a decade, while Spain faces a shortage of hundreds of thousands of homes. For younger people, buying is increasingly out of reach; renting is hardly a safe alternative.

The exact legal terms and duration of Abascal’s agreement have not been stated. That matters because a temporary reprieve would ease one family’s crisis without changing the rules that produced it.