‘Not one more Maricarmen’: tens of thousands flood 50 Spanish cities in housing rage

Spain's housing crisis spilled into the streets on Saturday, as tens of thousands of people marched in more than 50 cities after parliament rejected emergency tenant protections. The demonstrations, among the largest housing mobilisations in the country's recent history, were called after lawmakers voted down two government measures that would have strengthened safeguards for vulnerable tenants — including restrictions on evictions and automatic renewal of rental contracts. The parliamentary defeat detonated a week of anger that had been building around a single eviction. Maricarmen Abascal, 87, was removed from the Madrid apartment where she had lived for around seven decades. Her case became the symbol of a crisis in which average rents have nearly doubled over the past decade while asking prices for homes have risen by about 90 percent. Demonstrators in Madrid marched under the banner "Not one more Maricarmen." In Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, protesters demanded urgent action on rising rents, evictions and access to affordable housing. Some called for a general strike. The marches were backed by tenant unions and major trade unions, and the BBC reported more than 50 protests across the country on Saturday. The crisis has become the defining political problem for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's minority government, which failed to get its emergency legislation through parliament. The government's defeat has emboldened a movement that argues Spain's housing market has been captured by speculative investment funds — the fondos buitre, or "vulture funds," accused of buying up housing stock and pricing ordinary residents out of their own neighbourhoods. Short-term tourist rentals, which protesters say gentrify entire districts, have become a second front of the same war. Spain is not alone: from Lisbon to Berlin, European capitals are buckling under the same arithmetic of stagnant wages and financialised housing. But Saturday's turnout showed a movement that has moved past grievance into organisation. Tenant unions that spent years documenting individual evictions are now coordinating national days of action, and the demand has shifted from sympathy to statute — binding limits on rents, eviction bans, and an end to the tax advantages enjoyed by large landlords. The government has promised further measures, but the movement's message on Saturday was blunt: legislation delayed is protection denied. Until parliament acts, the streets will keep the count — of the evicted, the rent-burdened, and the Maricarmens.