For decades, that house was simply her home. Within a matter of hours, she had to say goodbye to everything she had built there.
Maricarmen Abascal is 87 years old and had lived since childhood in the same apartment in Madrid’s Retiro neighborhood. The original lease had been signed by her father, then passed to her mother and, after her death in 2005, was transferred to Maricarmen’s name.
For the past eight years, she had been in a dispute with the company that owned the property, which was seeking to repossess the home. The rent they demanded reached 2,650 euros a month and later dropped to 1,650, an amount that still exceeded her pension of 1,350 euros.
The September 2026 attempt was the fourth eviction attempt. Hundreds of neighbors and activists gathered to support her; some even spent the night on the building’s stairs. There were also various proposals to try to prevent her from having to leave the home, including an anonymous offer to pay her rent for life, but none managed to stop the order.
When the eviction was finally carried out, Maricarmen had to be treated by medical personnel and left the building lying on a stretcher, headed for the hospital. She then decided to stay temporarily with relatives.
The door she had walked through as a little girl in 1956 closed behind her seven decades later, this time with no chance of returning.