No one could say for sure now even what the turnout will be for the general elections on November 29th, but if there is half as much interest in the rest of Spain as there is inside Madrid's M-30, it will be quite high. What is being presented as the mother of all campaigns has had an unexpected start, following the reactions to the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal and her death on Wednesday. The PSOE has pinned all its hopes on the mobilization that has been set in motion following these events. The socialists are masters at handling emotional climates, but in this case, it is not even necessary. The reaction to the Maricarmen case has been quite spontaneous because there was a lot of accumulated frustration over the housing problem. It had to explode someday and it has done so now, which has given Pedro Sánchez an opportunity to try to overcome all expectations.

On Tuesday, on Horizonte, twenty-four hours before the death of Maricarmen Abascal, they excelled in their sensationalism with one of the most delusional comments ever made about this woman. Chapu Apaolaza, columnist and editorialist for Abc, claimed that the social mobilization around the eviction of this Madrid resident was actually a smokescreen created by the Spanish government itself to cover up the Ceuta crisis. According to the journalist, it was a cover-up strategy through a fiction constructed at the publicly owned residence in Lanzarote that Spanish prime ministers use to spend their vacations: “Tienen que sustituirlo por algo más grave. Hacen un casting y eso es lo que deciden en La Mareta. Todo lo que está sucediendo ahora es una operación que se decidió en La Mareta, con un casting para buscar a una mujer que sale con camilla de la casa, con un delegado del gobierno que, con un sindicato de inquilinas 'fake', termina acampado en Sol”. In other words, Maricarmen was an actress used to construct a farce to mobilize the left. No one contradicted the theory. Eduardo Inda confirmed it with histrionics and they claimed it was a system where every circumstance was replaced by a more serious one. They exhibited their concern about what the next action they would come up with would be. Íker Jimenez had a name for this type of operation: “Lo llaman la doctrina del shock”.

Although I am tempted to write with tenderness about what went through my mind yesterday when I heard on the radio that Maricarmen Abascal had died in the hospital, I will not do so. Others who fought by her side and who have stood in the squares of Madrid and Barcelona have been more eloquent, as have some shameless politicians with a lot of nerve.

The encampments against evictions and the death of Maricarmen Abascal, who became a popular symbol of the fight for housing, have marked the starting signal for the race towards the elections to the Cortes. There is no doubt that, right now, access to decent housing is the main problem for Catalan and Spanish society. The latest CIS survey, a monograph on the subject, does nothing but confirm the clamor in favor of a change in policies. People want solutions: seven out of ten citizens are in favor of freezing rent prices for two years, and also seven or more out of ten people are in favor of giving more guarantees to owners in the face of possible non-payments, limiting tourist apartments, and raising taxes on large holders.

When Feijóo points out that during Sánchez's eight years in office thousands of evictions have occurred without any special emotionality on the part of the Spanish government, he is right. And everyone has seen and understood that the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal has been the Spanish president's last ace up his sleeve (the last one so far) to go to elections with some possibility of a comeback.

I had this title written for the article when I saw that the Irish actor Liam Cunningham dedicated the same epitaph to Maricarmen Abascal in a tweet, only he was more specific: “Murdered by greed”, he wrote, murdered by greed. Yes, “murdered” is more accurate. Maricarmen's case has gone around the world and the icon has become global, because the housing crisis is spreading throughout Europe, in the form of collapse and emergency. For that reason, and because reacting to infamy is fortunately a human behavior, except for those individuals who already live anesthetized by cynicism. Or by greed itself. Maricarmen could not withstand the ordeal of being evicted from her home by a squad of police who knocked the door of her apartment down, as if they were going to confront a dangerous criminal. Whoever does not understand that this woman died because of this is not in a position to understand anything.

The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, once again claims the need for housing opportunities to be guaranteed in Catalonia and throughout the State, after the death this Wednesday of Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman who became a symbol of the fight for the right to a home following her eviction in Madrid. During a meeting with BBVA and Mexican businessmen held this Thursday at the Pedralbes Palace in Barcelona, Illa equated the current situation in the housing sector with the impact suffered by the productive sector after the outbreak of COVID-19.

Allow me to start the analysis by going off-script, but it is great news that yesterday 55,000 people attended the first farewell concert by Oques Grasses at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium. Filling an Olympic stadium is not within everyone's reach, and even less so doing it four days in a row. Do not miss the chronicle written by our musical specialist, Xavier Cervantes. Music sung in Catalan reaches people, it has an audience, an audience of all ages, including many young people, and when there is good news for our culture it must also be said.

A social outburst, two emergency decrees, a snap election in Spain, and a general strike. The magnitude of the consequences of the Maricarmen case explains the shock over the death this Wednesday of the 87-year-old woman, who had become, following her eviction in Madrid, a symbol of the fight for the right to housing. Social movements have been mourning the passing of Maricarmen Abascal since last night and, as expected, her death has fully entered into the pre-campaign for the November 29 elections. Political messages of condolence have turned into crossed attacks between the parties, and the left has erupted against the PP, which has vetoed minutes of silence in memory of the woman in the Senate and in the Assembly and City Council of Madrid.