On a stretcher, her features drawn, Maricarmen, 87, says goodbye to her home: the Madrilenian, evicted on Wednesday, has become the face of the housing crisis in Spain, where prices continue to increase, fueling the political debate a few months before the legislative elections.
After several years of legal battle, this retiree finally lost to a real estate agency which had acquired the apartment she had occupied for 70 years in the upscale Retiro district and increased her monthly rent by 275%, to 2,650 euros.
Despite a final unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court, Maricarmen was forced to leave her home, sparking a wave of national outrage.
“Maricarmen, you are not alone!” chanted dozens of demonstrators gathered in front of his home, while the octogenarian, who uses a wheelchair, was transported to an ambulance.
The case of this octogenarian brutally illustrates the housing crisis hitting Spain, where short-term tourist rentals, such as Airbnb, and “vulture funds” are accused of causing prices to soar and reducing supply.
In 10 years, the average rental price per square meter in the country has almost doubled, reaching 15.1 euros/m2 in August, according to the real estate portal Idealista. For purchase, it now stands at 2,355 euros, an increase of more than 50% over the same period, according to official figures.
Madrid is a particular focus of these tensions: placed in 2025 and 2026 at the top of its world ranking of cities popular for luxury real estate by the Barnes network, the Spanish capital has such limited social housing that certain social apartments are allocated by lottery.
According to a study published Wednesday by the consumer association OCU, it is now “extremely difficult” to find in Madrid, as in Barcelona, an apartment for a rent of less than 700 euros per month.
“This situation highlights the difficulties encountered by thousands of people and underlines the need to increase the supply of affordable rental housing,” argues the OCU in a press release.
“Social tragedy”
Faced with a crisis that has become the main concern of Spaniards, especially among young people, all eyes have been turned in recent hours to the left-wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the authorities of the Madrid region, led by the right (Popular Party, PP).
In Spain, a very decentralized country, it is the latter who are responsible for housing policy at the local level. Enough to fuel the executive’s criticism of the opposition.
“It is a social tragedy that we cannot accept,” said Pedro Sánchez from New York, where the story of Maricarmen largely took up his press conference just before his speech to the UN General Assembly.
The socialist leader directly pointed the finger at the conservative president of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, accused by the left for several months of having purchased, with public funds, a luxurious apartment with a terrace in the city center of Madrid for her personal use, which she denies.
On Wednesday evening, several thousand people symbolically demonstrated under the windows of this accommodation, but also in Barcelona and Oviedo.
On Thursday, Isabel Díaz Ayuso counterattacked by recalling that the expulsion of Maricarmen was the result of a “court decision”, and accusing the central government of “having done nothing in eight years” in power to modify the law.
“In a context of inflation and loss of purchasing power,” “this situation helps neither the opposition nor the government,” observes Guillermo Fernández-Vázquez, professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid.
For the executive, “this highlights the failure of all its housing policies” since 2018, he told AFP, while “the PP has every interest in stopping talking about Ms. Ayuso’s apartment.”
A few months before the legislative elections, Pedro Sánchez promised to “urgently” present a new text to Parliament.
But without a majority and weakened by multiple legal cases, the head of government remains under pressure from the opposition and its allies in the chamber, such as the radical left Sumar party, which is calling for “freezing rents”.
