After an 87-year-old tenant is carried out by police, Madrid's housing anger draws a mass march

MADRID — An estimated tens of thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of the Spanish capital on Saturday, marching behind banners denouncing the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman pulled from the flat she had occupied for seven decades after police broke down her door.

Images of Abascal being carried out on a stretcher on Wednesday have thrust Spain's deepening housing crunch into the national spotlight at a politically delicate moment, with a general election due in 2027 and rents and home prices rising faster than wages in much of the country.

The march, organised a few days after the eviction, was the largest single mobilisation tied to the case, though official attendance figures differed sharply from those claimed by organisers. Madrid authorities put turnout at around 25,000, while protest organisers said 300,000 people had taken part. Demonstrators chanted slogans and carried placards demanding measures to curb rising housing costs and to make evictions harder to carry out. One read: "You could be the next Maricarmen."

For many of those who joined, the case has become a symbol of a broader shift in the Spanish property market, in which long-standing tenants in desirable city-centre buildings are increasingly outbid by wealthier newcomers, short-term holiday rental platforms and investment funds.

"It is a struggle to find a place you can afford, then you live in fear of being forced out," said Enrique Ortega de Miguel, a 38-year-old graphic designer who marched alongside his mother. He described the housing market in Spain as "impossible" — a word of testimony that echoes the frustration of younger Spaniards who see themselves priced out of the cities where they were born and raised.

Abascal herself, now recovering in hospital from exhaustion following the eviction, addressed supporters in a video message posted online just hours before the march. The clip was shared by Spain's main tenants' union, InquilinatoMad, which has long campaigned against what it calls "vulture" landlords and investors buying up buildings and then raising rents or selling them for profit.

"I want what has happened to me to serve so that it does not happen to other people," she said from her hospital bed. "I want it to encourage people to fight and to help change the laws that have allowed me to be evicted."

According to the tenants' union, Abascal was forced out of her apartment after a real estate firm acquired the building and increased the rent on her home by 275 percent, to 2,650 euros a month — roughly $3,000. The sharp increase, arriving after decades of what had been a stable tenancy, left her with no realistic prospect of keeping the home.

The government has been under mounting pressure since the eviction, with regular demonstrations reported across Spain. Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who declared housing a government priority last year, is now expected to bring a package of measures known as the "Maricarmen decree" before his cabinet for approval. Elements reported to be on the table include automatic renewal of rental contracts and additional restrictions on the circumstances in which landlords may evict tenants.

The political arithmetic is uncertain. Sánchez's government does not hold a majority in parliament, and a comparable bill was defeated earlier this year, suggesting the package could face the same fate even as public anger intensifies. Analysts note, however, that the visibility of Abascal's case — an elderly woman hospitalised after being physically removed from her home — has raised the pressure on all major parties, particularly those courting urban voters before the 2027 vote.

Underlying the crisis is a severe shortage of dwellings. The Bank of Spain estimated that the country was short about 550,000 homes last year, with Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia accounting for a substantial share of that gap. Supply has been squeezed by years of construction skewed toward the high-end market, by holiday letting platforms such as Airbnb absorbing apartments in tourist districts, and by institutional investors snapping up entire buildings in the centre of major cities.

Public rental housing, meanwhile, remains scarce. Spain ranks near the bottom of the OECD league table on the size of its public rental sector, which represents less than 2 percent of available housing stock, against an EU average of 8 percent. The country's stock was also thinned after previous decades in which homes built with public funds were later sold into private ownership, removing them permanently from the affordable sector.

For Abascal, none of that context offers much comfort. Her video appeal — and the thousands who answered it in the street — suggest that for a fast-growing slice of Spanish society, the argument has moved beyond statistics. The demand is not merely for cheaper rent, marchers said, but for a legal framework that makes a landlord's power over a vulnerable tenant appear less absolute.

Whether Sánchez's cabinet can translate Saturday's anger into a durable legislative majority will determine whether the "Maricarmen decree" becomes law or joins the list of well-intentioned housing proposals that stalled in the Spanish parliament.