Maricarmen before eviction Blames leaders and owner

Sep 23

In an RTVE interview recorded at her Madrid home on the afternoon of September 22, Maricarmen Abascal speaks before the eviction expected the following day. She says residents make a home out of its walls and wants to take her belongings with her. She says she is leaving Madrid because tourism has displaced its neighbourhood life. Asked whom she holds responsible, she names Pedro Sánchez, Isabel Ayuso and José Luis Martínez-Almeida. She calls Urbagestión inhumane, asks its representatives to imagine their own parents in her situation and describes seven years of distress under the threat of losing her home. These are her criticisms and stated intention; the interview establishes neither a completed departure nor the outcome of the next day's eviction.

Tagesschau's September 27 report recounts the eviction of an 87-year-old Madrid resident from the home where she had lived for about seventy years. It says a company bought the property and substantially increased the rent, and presents the eviction as the trigger for the September 26 housing protest. Pre-broadcast Spanish reporting identifies her as Maricarmen and dates the eviction to September 23. The broadcast supplies no court ruling or subsequent resolution. Democracy Now identifies her as María del Carmen Abascal Martín and shows her hospital-bed message after police broke down her door and carried her out on a stretcher. Sabina Carrau says the dispute began with a notice seven years earlier and a demand for roughly triple the rent; she says Maricarmen remains in hospital with health needs and no alternative home as of the interview. The anchor's rent increase is phrased as more than triple. No return-home agreement or completed rehousing is reported. TV Brasil recounts the eviction and broadcasts Maricarmen's hospital-bed appeal for her experience to help others resist eviction and change the laws that allowed it. It links her case to the continuing camp and Sánchez's proposed housing response, without reporting rehousing or resolution. RTVE's September 28 evening coverage shows Maricarmen encouraging the campers from hospital and reports negotiations over her return home. Its later conditional agreement is a separate development: her approval is still pending and no return has taken place in this broadcast. Tagesschau's September 29 account again identifies Maricarmen Abascal, says she could not afford a rent increase and recalls her hospitalization after the eviction. It links her case to demonstrations spreading across Spain. The later statement that a new lease will allow her return is a separate subsequent development, not evidence that she has already moved back. In the October 2 plenary, Housing Minister Rodríguez recalls the eviction as a collective failure that accelerated political agreement and describes the elderly tenant being carried out on a stretcher. PP's Juan Bravo argues instead that the new decree would not have prevented this eviction because Article 2 permits proceeding where alternative housing exists and, he says, Madrid city and regional authorities provided an alternative. That is Bravo's claim and interpretation, retained alongside Carrau's earlier statement that Maricarmen had no alternative home; this draft does not resolve whether an offered alternative was suitable or prove either legal conclusion. RTVE's September 22 interview supplies Maricarmen's own account on the eve of this eviction. The reporter explicitly dates the recording to that afternoon and asks how she feels before the expected eviction; Maricarmen describes seven years of distress, says she intends to leave Madrid and criticizes tourism's effect on neighbourhood life. She holds Pedro Sánchez, Isabel Ayuso, José Luis Martínez-Almeida and Urbagestión responsible for her situation, calling the company inhumane and objecting to profit at others' expense. These remain her attributed views and intentions. This anticipatory account does not show the eviction, departure from Madrid, any rental agreement or a completed return; the occurrence date remains September 23.