Spain: Madrid eviction spurs countrywide struggle for housing

By John Catalinotto

A Spanish “vulture” real-estate holding company used police Sept. 23 to evict an 87-year-old woman from the apartment  she had been living in for 70 years. Housing rights activists had barricaded themselves outside her home to help fight the  eviction but were beaten aside by Madrid’s cops.

The brutal eviction started a storm that spread throughout the Spanish state faster than the Nor’easter spread waves along  the Atlantic shore. The Spanish government now says it will pass a law that prevents these kinds of evictions (such laws  existed during the Covid-19 pandemic). Its goal is to prevent an even broader struggle from opening up.

The evicted woman, María del Carmen Abascal, or Maricarmen, as she is known, depends on a wheelchair for mobility.  She had been paying 500 euros a month rent ($570) until the apartment house her home is in was taken over by the  Urbigestión real estate speculators, who raised her rent to 2,650 euros a month, almost twice Maricarmen’s monthly  pension of 1,350 euros.

With the help of housing activists in the Tenants’ Union, Maricarmen challenged the rent hike in the courts. The case  reached the Spanish Supreme Court, which ruled in March in Urbagestión’s favor.

More than 100 protesters fought Maricarmen’s eviction, with riot police carrying her out on a stretcher. On Saturday,  Sept.  26, thousands marched through the streets of Madrid in protest. Some protesters set up an encampment made out  of  tents, sleeping bags, mats, etc., at Puerta del Sol, a public square in Madrid that is often the end point of protest  marches.

The eviction now has aroused a broad working-class struggle against the real-estate speculators across the country. Rents  in Spain have risen by 80% in the last decade while the cost of a home rose by 63%.

“We’re all Maricarmen,” read one demonstrator’s banner Sept. 23. (New York Times, Sept. 24) Hundreds have occupied  the square and have been sleeping in tents at Puerta del Sol and are still there as of Sept. 28.

For a guest political analysis from the Coordination of Communist Cells (CNC), a Marxist organization inside the Spanish  state, Workers World publishes the following statement. Translation: Catalinotto.

Statement from the Coordination of Communist Cells (CNC)

September 25, 2026

The eviction of an 87-year-old woman with a 50% disability from the apartment where she had lived for 70 years — for  which she paid a rent of 500 euros —carried out by Urbagestión — a company engaged in real estate speculation — is the  last straw in a process that has been unfolding for decades, in which the working class is being deprived of access to a  basic necessity.

The collapse of the productive economy is driving big capital to take over every social sphere it can turn into a commodity:  transportation, electricity, water, social services … and now, in an unchecked manner, housing. The working class, which  builds all kinds of housing developments and luxury homes, scrapes by renting a hovel, or even in “hot beds” (a bed is  rented for eight hours, used by three people per day to sleep).

The outrage of witnessing, day after day, how people are thrown out onto the street — whether because they’ve lost their  jobs or because their wages or pensions are insufficient — is accompanied by a chain of actions involving governments and  state apparatuses, without whose participation this assault on the working class would not be possible.

The deprivation of the working class’s right to housing — in order to turn it into a speculative commodity — is a burning  issue throughout the European Union (EU). In fact, in major European cities such as Berlin, Germany, and Graz, Austria,  left-wing organizations have won elections by making the expropriation of large investment funds a central goal of their  platform.

In Spain, the collaboration between the Peoples Party (PP), Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), Sumar and Podemos (when it  was in power) has led to the passage of laws — or the failure to repeal them — that favor financial capital and large  corporations, particularly in the execution of the brutal crime of eviction. On the contrary, they send their “law  enforcement” to beat and arrest supportive neighbors who try to prevent the most flagrant crimes, applying the Gag Law —  which they promised to repeal and which remains the legal bulwark of the fiercest repression.

Maricarmen’s “eviction” in Madrid — savage and brutal — was carried out by riot police, ordered not by Isabel Díaz Ayuso,  president of the Community of Madrid — who would have done the same anyway — but by Spanish Interior Minister  Fernando Grande Marlaska. This government minister, against whom no motion of no confidence has been filed by any  coalition partner — nor by the “progressive” supporters who back him — is directly responsible for the escalating  repression currently being waged in Spain against the working class and anti-fascist youth.

In evictions, just as in strikes, on one side stands the proletariat and on the other, the forces of “order” that protect capital  itself.

The attempt to mask the direct responsibility of the PSOE-Sumar government by organizing a demonstration in front of  Ayuso’s penthouse is a pathetic maneuver to prevent — with elections on the horizon — the futility of relying on the  institutional left to solve the most pressing social problems from being brought to light. They represent the interests of the  imperialist bourgeoisie and govern on their behalf.

The proposal — now! after eight years in power — to expropriate multiple property owners would be laughable if it weren’t   for all the accumulated suffering they have witnessed without batting an eye.

Neither those who govern today nor those who seek to replace them have the slightest credibility. They enact and enforce  laws that enshrine private property above any social need and direct repressive forces against workers who attempt to  resist.

The upcoming elections will not change anything in favor of the working class, no matter who wins — just as the elections  that have been taking place for decades have not. On the contrary. The plan of the imperialist oligarchy, both here and  abroad, is to continue turning what little remains of social rights into commodities and to defend the swelling of their  profits using the apparatus of the state.