The demonstration for Maricarmen Abascal begins: "I want the unjust laws that have allowed my eviction to be changed"

Madrid / BarcelonaThe eviction of Maricarmen Abascal has triggered a wave of indignation that was visible on Wednesday in the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, and various cities across the State, and it has been repeated this Saturday in a demonstration in the center of the Spanish capital. Thousands of people gathered at the Plaza del Sol, where the seat of the Community of Madrid government is located, to walk to the Madrid City Hall and end at the Congress of Deputies. It is there that the Spanish government wants to approve the new housing decree that would serve to prevent evictions like those of Maricarmen Abascal. However, at this time, the Ministry of Housing is still negotiating the regulation with its investiture partners and also with its own coalition partner, Sumar. In fact, the party founded by Yolanda Díaz has threatened to skip the council of ministers meeting on Tuesday if this decree is not approved.

The pressure from the minority coalition partner, Sumar, coincides with the mobilizations that are being organized by civil society to protest against the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whom a vulture fund forced out of the apartment where she had lived her whole life, and to demand measures to guarantee housing for everyone. "This is not just about one Maricarmen. It is so that no one else is expelled from their home while some make a profit from a basic right," argue the organizers of the demonstration, led by the Madrid Tenants' Union. In fact, the union's spokesperson, Alicia del Río, has gone even a step further and stated that the coalition government "makes no sense" if it does not approve the housing decree on Tuesday. "If it is not approved this Tuesday, this government that calls itself progressive makes no sense at all. The wave of indignation that has been unleashed will not stop," she maintained before the start of the demonstration, where she also accused the governments of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and José Luis Martínez Almeida of inaction regarding the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal.

This very Saturday, Maricarmen Abascal herself has demanded that the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, approve this decree on Tuesday to change "the unjust laws" that have allowed her eviction. "I want the unjust laws that have allowed my eviction to be changed," she requested through a video released by the Madrid Tenants' Union. Maricarmen Abascal has requested this "first step" to end "this nonsense." "I want what happened to me to serve so that it does not happen to other people," she added, still from the Gregorio Marañón Hospital, where she was taken on the day of the eviction.

This Friday it transpired that the vulture fund Urbagestión Desarrollo e Inversión SL submitted a proposal to the Madrid City Council so that the woman could return to her apartment. However, the council rejected it because it "does not meet the legal requirements" and has called a meeting on Monday with the representatives of Maricarmen Abascal and the fund that owns the apartment to mediate.

Race against time negotiation

While thousands of people were demonstrating through the streets of Madrid, the Spanish government continues negotiating with its partners. And now it does so with Sumar's threat not to show up at Tuesday's council of ministers if the housing decree is not approved. It would not be the first time, in any case, that Sumar stands up a council of ministers: it already did so in the month of March, delaying its start by more than two hours, due to disagreements with the PSOE over the content of the anti-crisis decree following the war in Ukraine. The Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, is working against the clock to manage to get them all into the equation, although it wants to ensure that what is approved passes the filter of the Congress of Deputies.

"This country needs a great agreement on housing matters that prevents any more Maricarmens from being evicted from their homes and that protects the hundreds of thousands of people who cannot make ends meet because of housing," Sumar asserted in a statement. In their view, the solutions involve "the protection of families against evictions and vulture funds, the regulation of speculative uses of housing such as tourist apartments and fraud in seasonal or room rentals, the recovery of Maricarmen's housing and the automatic renewal of rental contracts." However, these demands must be married with those that Junts has put on the table to ensure that if a new housing decree-law is approved on Tuesday, the measures are validated in the Congress of Deputies.

As reported this Friday by ARA, the demands from Miriam Nogueras' party involve tax incentives for both tenants and landlords –such as a 15% tax deduction on personal income tax (IRPF) and tax exemptions for those who sell their property to the administration to increase public housing stock– and also placing limitations on vulture funds, such as preventing them from buying properties and preventing them from evicting vulnerable families from their properties. However, there is no consensus on the automatic renewal of leases, which Junts wants to be voluntary, and on generally preventing all evictions. Junts requests that in the case of "small landlords" –the fine print to define the term is being finalized– evictions should be allowed to proceed and that the administration should take on the housing alternative. The Ministry of Housing guarantees that they are working on "structural" measures, different from those rejected by Congress so far, in order to gather the necessary consensus from Podemos, EH Bildu, Sumar, and ERC to Junts and the PNV.