The woman whose eviction turned Spain’s housing shortage into a national revolt has died. Maricarmen Abascal, 87, whom many Spaniards knew simply as Maricarmen, died on Wednesday, October 7, the Madrid Tenants’ Union said. “We are sorry to announce that Maricarmen passed away today,” the union said in a statement, as DW reports, adding that her situation marked “a turning point in the history of this country.” The union gave no cause of death in the reports the desk read. Al Jazeera and DW report that she had stayed in hospital since her eviction; DW says she went in for exhaustion.

Her story ran deep into Madrid’s past. Her father first rented the flat in 1956, the BBC reports, and she kept the tenancy after her parents died, under an old contract that capped the rent. A legal glitch, the BBC says, let the landlord, the investment company Urbagestión, lift her rent from €500 to €2,650 a month, later lowered to €1,650, still €300 more than her monthly pension. Al Jazeera describes an international investment fund that bought her building and raised her rent by more than 200 percent, a move it says aimed to push out a long-term tenant and make way for lucrative tourist flats. The desk found no response from the landlord in the reports it read.

Courts blocked three earlier attempts to evict her, the BBC reports. The fourth went ahead on September 23, when she left her home of about seven decades on a stretcher. The company later offered to let her return at a lower rent, the BBC says, but she never signed the deal because she had entered hospital. The tenants’ union said the deal that would have let her go home came “too late,” DW reports, and it called the whole ordeal totally avoidable and torturous for her. It also promised to keep fighting for housing, as she had always asked.

Her eviction lit a fuse. The Madrid Tenants’ Union set up a protest camp in the Puerta del Sol, one of Madrid’s main squares, and the protests spread to dozens of cities, Al Jazeera reports. Tens of thousands marched across Spain last weekend, according to the BBC. On Friday, October 2, Congress rejected the coalition government’s emergency housing decrees; DW reports that the seven lawmakers of the Catalan separatist party Junts, whose votes the government has leaned on since 2023, brought the measures down. On Monday, Sánchez called an early general election for November 29, saying he needed “a broader progressive majority” able to “overcome the resistance of the elites,” the BBC reports.

News of her death drew people back to the square. Protesters gathered in the Puerta del Sol after the union’s announcement, the BBC reports; the square has held a protest encampment for about two weeks. Sánchez wrote on X: “All my love goes to Maricarmen’s family and loved ones,” in the BBC’s translation. He added: “A hug as well to everyone who today feels this loss as their own.” Territorial Policy Minister Ángel Víctor Torres said she stood for the plight of many people struggling with the housing crisis, DW reports.

Hours before the news, Spain’s unions had raised the stakes. The Workers’ General Union (UGT) and the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO), the country’s two largest, announced a nationwide general strike over housing for November 11, Al Jazeera reports, citing AFP and Reuters. They said other unions still needed to ratify the date at a meeting later on Wednesday. If it goes ahead, Al Jazeera says, it will mark the first general strike that both unions have jointly backed in 14 years. DW calls it a 24-hour strike. Valeria Racu, a spokesperson for the Madrid Tenants’ Union, argued that most of a worker’s wage now goes on housing, and asked what good a higher minimum wage does when housing costs rise three, four, or five times faster, Al Jazeera reports.

The numbers behind the anger look stark. The Bank of Spain estimates a shortfall of about 750,000 homes that could pass one million by 2028, according to Al Jazeera and DW. The average rent of €1,176 a month equals about 98.7 percent of a young person’s average monthly salary, Al Jazeera reports, citing the Youth Council of Spain. DW reports that more than half of Spaniards aged 18 to 34 live with their parents or depend on them financially, that property prices have lately risen three times as fast as wages, and that social housing makes up only about 1.7 percent of Spain’s housing stock, near the bottom of the European Union.

The election now turns on housing. Most polls suggest the conservative Popular Party (PP) will finish as the largest party but will need the hard-right Vox to govern, the BBC reports. DW puts Vox at just over 18 percent, about six points above its 2023 result, and says Vox leader Santiago Abascal now sets conditions for cooperation; the desk found no report of any family tie between him and Maricarmen. The right argues that the government’s push to intervene in the rental market would leave fewer homes for rent and drive prices higher, the BBC reports. The tenants’ movement, DW notes, attacks Sánchez’s plans from the other side as too weak. Sánchez also carries corruption scandals linked to his party, a migration crisis in the Ceuta exclave, and cost-of-living pressure into the campaign, the BBC and DW report.

Open questions the desk will watch: whether the smaller unions ratify November 11, whether the Puerta del Sol camp grows after her death, whether the government can still pass any housing measure before November 29 without a working majority, and whether the campaign moves voters toward Sánchez’s promised protections or toward the PP and Vox.