An 87-year-old Madrid woman evicted from her home of more than 70 years will be allowed to move back under a new lease agreed with her landlord, her lawyer said on Monday.
The agreement caps the rent paid by Maria del Carmen Abascal, known as Maricarmen, at roughly the same level she was paying before the eviction, for a period of eight years under Spain’s Urban Leasing Law, according to her lawyer, Beatriz Duro.
Abascal was forcibly removed by stretcher from her apartment on Alcalde Sainz de Baranda street in Madrid’s Retiro district on Sept. 23, after a fourth eviction attempt, and was hospitalised for exhaustion. She will sign the new lease once she is discharged, Duro said.
The dispute began after the property firm Urbagestión Desarrollo e Inversión S.L. bought Abascal’s building in 2018 with her as a sitting tenant paying 500 euros a month, drawn from a pension of about 1,300 euros. The company later sought to raise the rent to as much as 2,650 euros, before it was reduced to 1,650 euros, a sum Abascal said she could not afford.
Abascal said she had never missed a rent payment. Her case went through Spain’s courts for six years: she won a first-instance ruling, the Madrid Provincial Court overturned it, and the Supreme Court ultimately sided with the landlord, clearing the way for her eviction.
The eviction drew large protests. Madrid’s tenants’ union, the Sindicato de Inquilinas e Inquilinos de Madrid, organised a march from Puerta del Sol to Congress under the slogan “Not One More Maricarmen” and set up a tent encampment that spread to dozens of other Spanish cities, according to the union. The demonstration was covered in an earlier report, The granny who beat the property company.
The new lease was negotiated over nearly five hours at the offices of Madrid’s municipal housing body, Empresa Municipal de la Vivienda y Suelo (EMVS), which acted as guarantor, according to Duro. The city council’s Rental Intermediation Service brokered the deal between Urbagestión, Abascal’s representatives and the tenants’ union.
Under the arrangement, Abascal’s rent will not exceed 30% of her net income, and the package includes free landlord insurance against non-payment and property damage along with legal, technical and tax advice for the tenant, according to EMVS.
Ana de Miguel, EMVS’s managing director, described the agreed rent as affordable and said it remained well below market price for the area.
“This is a historic milestone.”
Duro called the outcome the result of social mobilisation and said no tenant evicted under similar circumstances had previously been able to return home. She said the deal came “late,” after what she called a situation no one should have to endure.
Carolina Vilariño, spokeswoman for the tenants’ union, said the case showed that “union struggle works.” The union described the outcome as a “historic win” in a post on the social platform X.
Protesters still camped in Puerta del Sol called the deal “a small step” and said they would keep demonstrating for other tenants facing similar evictions, according to reporting from the encampment.
The case prompted the Socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to draft a package of housing measures for a parliamentary vote, with the leading proposal extending expired tenant protections through 2030. Spain’s central bank has estimated a shortage of roughly 755,000 homes nationwide, a gap it projects could widen toward a million units by 2028.
Abascal’s lease still requires her formal signature, which her lawyer said would follow her discharge from Madrid’s Gregorio Marañón hospital.