Maricarmen Abascal wanted to die in the room where her parents died.
She was 87 and had lived for 71 years in the same apartment in Madrid’s Retiro district, which her father rented in 1956. With a pension of 1,400 euros, she never stopped paying her rent under the old rental regime or her bills. Even so, in 2020 the owners told her she had to leave, and from then on they tried to evict her four times. After almost seven years of court proceedings, she was evicted on September 23. She had her family’s black-and-white photos and little else in her hands.
She ended up at Hospital Gregorio Marañón, where she remained hospitalized until this Wednesday. Months earlier, she had warned that her fight for her home would cost her her life. After the eviction, the streets filled with people under the slogan “We are all Maricarmen”, and the company finally agreed to sign a new contract with her. Her family, her lawyer, and the Tenants’ Union sum it up this way: “this solution came too late”.