MADRID: Thousands of people marched through Madrid on Saturday (Sep 26) to protest the eviction earlier this week of an 87-year-old woman from her lifelong home, calling for greater protection for tenants.

Images of Maricarmen Abascal being carried from her Madrid flat on a stretcher on Wednesday after police broke down her door have thrust Spain's housing crisis back into the spotlight ahead of a general election due in 2027.

Protesters rattled keys, blew whistles, chanted slogans and held banners calling for measures to curb rising housing costs and make evictions more difficult as they marched through central Madrid. "You could be the next Maricarmen," read one banner.

Enrique Ortega de Miguel, a 38-year-old graphic designer who lives with his mother, said the housing market in Spain was "impossible".

"It is a struggle to find a place you can afford, then you live in fear of being forced out," he told AFP at the protest.

Government authorities put the turnout at around 25,000, while organisers of the protest said 300,000 participated.

"Maricarmen's eviction has caused outrage and marks a turning point," Alicia del Rio, spokesman for the Madrid Tenants' Union, told reporters at the start of the march, which ended outside parliament.

Abascal, who has become a symbol of Spain's housing crisis, urged Spaniards to join the protest in a video message posted online just hours before it got underway.

"I want what has happened to me to serve so that it does not happen to other people," she said from hospital, where she has been treated for exhaustion since her eviction.

"I want it to encourage people to fight and to help change the laws that have allowed me to be evicted," she added in the video, posted by the tenants' union.

People gather during a protest following the eviction last Wednesday of 87-year-old Maricarmen to demand stronger laws to protect renters at Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026. "FED UP" Abascal was forced to leave the apartment where she had lived for 70 years after a real estate firm acquired the property and raised the rent by 275 per cent to 2,650 euros ($3,000), according to the union.

Irene Lopez, a 33-year-old engineer, said the situation "has become unsustainable".

"There are people who can't afford to live in cities; rents are out of step with salaries," she told AFP, describing the eviction of Maricarmen as "the last straw".

Another protester, Maricarmen Arnedo, a 76-year-old pensioner, said that while older people were being forced out of their homes, "young people can't move out of their parents' homes".

"We want house prices and rents to come down, because I'm fed up with washing the underpants of my 53-year-old son," she added.

SOCIAL TRAGEDY Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who last year pledged to make housing a government priority, is under growing pressure to act. There have been regular protests across Spain since Abascal's eviction. He has called Abascal's eviction a "social tragedy that we cannot accept".

The government is expected to approve a package of measures dubbed the "Maricarmen decree" at its next cabinet meeting, including the automatic renewal of rental contracts and further restrictions on evictions.

But it is unclear whether the package will be approved by parliament, where Sanchez's government lacks a majority.

While a similar bill was defeated earlier this year, Abascal's case has increased pressure on political parties to act.

The Bank of Spain estimates the country of around 50 million people is short of 700,000 homes, based on the gap between demand and new construction.

Spain has little public housing, while rents have been driven up by increased demand, including from tourism and population growth linked to immigration, analysts say.