Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets across Spain after riot police violently evicted an 87-year-old woman named Mari Carmen Abascal from her home in Madrid. She had been living in a flat under a long-standing tenancy agreement for 70 years and had never failed to pay her rent, contrary to the claims of Madrid’s president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The eviction, ordered by a judge following a complaint by the property company Urbagestión – which had demanded a rent increase the woman could not possibly afford – has been the spark that has ignited social mobilisation and a sit-in by thousands of people at Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and in other cities, 15 years on from the 15M movement.
This brutal eviction – just one of the 4,000 that have already taken place this year – has set the record straight: hundreds of thousands of young people and workers protesting in the streets, the right wing ridiculing a social tragedy, and the most progressive government in history realising that housing is a major problem for the public.
Led by the Tenants’ Union, the protest is calling on the coalition government to implement five basic measures against property speculation: a ban on evicting vulnerable people without alternative accommodation; reform of the Urban Leases Act (LAU) to limit seasonal and room-by-room rentals; a freeze on current rent levels to prevent increases when contracts are renewed; an extension of contracts expiring between this year and next (around one million); and the automatic renewal of contracts if landlords do not need the flat for their own use.
All these demands are as fair as they are necessary and urgent. The lack of a proper housing policy from the PSOE-led government has created an unsustainable situation, which increases inequality and only benefits large property owners who speculate on prices and change the character of neighbourhoods, whilst millions of tenants are spending an ever-increasing proportion of their earnings on exorbitant rents.
The figures do not lie: between 2015 and 2025, average personal income rose by 50 per cent and wages by around 30 per cent, whilst the cost of buying a home increased by 80 per cent and the cost of renting by 87 per cent. Yet the most common annual wage rose from 16,498 euros to 16,520 in 2024 over the course of ten years, according to data from the INE. For years now, we have been subjected to a robbery at gunpoint, condoned by all levels of government. According to the latest bulletin from the Ministry of Housing, there are barely 318,000 social housing units in Spain, representing 1.3 per cent of the total number of flats available. According to the OECD, in the Netherlands, 34 per cent of the housing stock is allocated to social housing. It is followed by Austria (24 per cent), Denmark (21 per cent), the United Kingdom (16 per cent) and France (14 per cent). This is called institutional neglect.
This is a unique moment because a large section of society has said that we cannot carry on like this. They are stealing our wages in exchange for a roof over our heads, just to enrich a select few.
Housing has become a lucrative business for rentiers, vulture funds and banks – groups with close ties to the right and the far right, accustomed to controlling the agenda and the media narrative, and even to using neo-Nazi thugs to evict tenants in distress.
On 26 September, something changed.
Nearly half a million people packed into the national capital and several thousand camped outside the headquarters of the Madrid Regional Government – that hotbed of unbridled rent-seeking, governed by a president with a preference for luxury penthouses and opaque public-private partnerships. The people have risen up with immense dignity and said ‘enough is enough’. Not only against the regional governments led by the PP and Vox.
They have also stated, loud and clear, that Pedro Sánchez’s government is responsible for this situation. Over the past eight years, the PSOE and its allies have allowed the system of speculation and rent-seeking to be reinforced with impunity, without passing a single measure worthy of being called left-wing, simply accepting the rules of a completely rigged market. These are the disastrous consequences.
The Government has reacted in a hurry this time, and at the Council of Ministers meeting on Tuesday 29th it passed not one, but two decrees. The first, agreed with the governing majority, provides protection against evictions until 2030; regulates seasonal rentals and room lettings; bans the purchase of vulture funds until 2028; and extends existing contracts due to expire before 31 December 2028 by two years.
Furthermore, the PSOE and Sumar have agreed on the automatic renewal of tenancies, which will be included in the second royal decree, set to be tabled in Parliament during the extraordinary plenary session to be held on Friday 2 October.
At CTXT, we consider the measures adopted to be belated, ineffective and wholly insufficient.
Society demands structural change to the housing system, not an opportunistic and/or temporary stopgap that will do nothing to alleviate, in the medium and long term, the brutal social injustice generated by an unregulated market. To move towards that goal, we believe it is urgent that tenants’ unions and class-based unions organise a general strike for housing. Because rights are only won or reclaimed on the streets, through the organised struggle of the working class and students. And because this historic moment demands it: we must put an end once and for all to the notion of housing as a speculative business for a handful of millionaires, and ensure that homes are treated as a basic necessity, essential for everyone to lead a dignified life.
