When Maricarmen Abascal, a disabled 87 year-old, was evicted from the Madrid home where she had lived for 71 years, hundreds of people gathered outside in an attempt to prevent it. She was eventually forcibly removed from the building, and taken to hospital on a stretcher.

Her eviction sparked a wave of protests (still ongoing at the time of writing) against a housing crisis that, for many, has endured since the 2008 crash.

Following a week of negotiations and widespread demonstrations, Maricarmen’s landlord – a private investment fund that had hiked her rent by 230% – agreed to let her return under a new eight-year tenancy with limited rent. She is expected to return home after leaving hospital.

But the protests that followed her eviction are not just about one woman’s story. They reflect a deeper problem that extends beyond Spain. Across Europe, countless others like Maricarmen are facing similar struggles to find and keep a roof over their heads.

Spain’s social housing crisis

In Spain, the contradiction is striking. Article 47 of Spain’s Constitution recognises the right to “decent and adequate” housing, and requires public authorities to create the “conditions necessary to make that right effective”.

Yet Spain has remarkably little social housing. Estimates put social housing at between 1,5% to 3,3% of the housing stock, varying across regions.

Spain inherited a housing model from the Francoist dictatorship, which was historically oriented towards home ownership through a combination of subsidised mortgages, tax incentives and systematic privatisation of publicly........

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