Woman at the centre of Spain's housing crisis dies

Alex Ritson (0:00)

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Thursday, October the 8th, these are our main stories. The evicted 87-year-old whose plight became the symbol of Spain's housing crisis and prompted a snap election has died. A US judge has ordered officials in Tennessee to preserve evidence from last week's botched attempt to execute the death row inmate Christa Pike.

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An elderly woman in Spain whose eviction sparked protests over the country's housing crisis and a political row that triggered early elections has died. Maricarmen Abascal, who was 87, was forcibly removed from her apartment last month after she was unable to afford rent increases. She had lived there for more than 70 years. The news of her death on Wednesday sparked renewed protests over affordable housing, with hundreds gathering near the parliament building in central Madrid, chanting slogans and lighting candles in her memory.

SPEAKER_3 (1:31)

Right now I'm crying on the subway and my first reaction is that Maricarmen hasn't died. She was killed by this capitalist system and I find it shameful that everyone isn't out on the streets protesting to ensure this never happens again.

SPEAKER_4 (1:51)

A lot of sorrow, I think that's what we all share. A great deal of sorrow and above all the thought that she is the cause, the head of this whole revolution and that she can't see it.

It makes me so sad that she won't see if anything comes of it, if there's any result from all that she's fought for.

Alex Ritson (2:09)

Our reporter Albert Morgada was at the protest and she began by telling me about what is going on around the circumstances of Maricarmen Abascal's death.

Albert Morgada (2:19)

She was admitted to hospital just the day of the eviction. You might remember that she was taken on a stretcher.

Her health condition was really weak. She had a 50% disability recognised due to mobility. And what media reports and her lawyers had said is that all the circumstances around the attempted evictions that were several over the last few years have really caused her a lot of stress and a lot of exhaustion. Regarding the circumstances of her death are not yet known. But we know that she died in a hospital in Madrid and has caused an absolute upride in the city and across the country.

Alex Ritson (2:59)

Well, as we can hear behind you, I think.

Albert Morgada (3:03)

Exactly. There is a small protest. I would say there is a few hundred people, 300, 400 that were in this square in the center of Madrid, where people have come to demand for better solutions on the housing crisis and were initiated after the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal. They have taken today to the doors of Congress, which is just 500 meters away from this square. Just to say, well, they are chanting several things, but one of the things is that she didn't die, she was killed. Again, people here are demanding solutions to the housing crisis and that's been really affecting people, especially the youth in this country. There's been improvised video as well with people lighting candles and you can see a lot of banners and little messages in different places of the street.

Just remembering Maricarmen Abascal.

Alex Ritson (3:54)

The eviction was arguably a big factor in the calling of the snap election by the Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. How is this pensioner's death going to play into that upcoming poll?

Albert Morgada (4:09)

Well, I think this will make people go to the polls.

The people here want real solutions. If that will benefit Pedro Sánchez, who is the one who has called his early election, thinking that this movement will benefit him, we don't know yet. But I think the death of Maricarmen Abascal today and the outcry we're seeing not just in Madrid, where I am, but across the country and all the trivias that I've been seeing online, I think they're going to make people really go to the streets and ask for the vote and ask for solutions, a different alternative to the situation that we've been living in Spain for the last few years, where people can't afford to live in the cities where they were born, like was the case of Maricarmen Abascal.

Alex Ritson (4:52)