Four hours of talks late Monday ended with Urbagestión agreeing to let 87-year-old Maricarmen return to her Retiro apartment, where she had lived for seventy years. The property owner met with Maricarmen’s legal and family team and the Empresa Municipal de Vivienda y Suelo (EMVS), Madrid’s city housing company.
The deal, confirmed by Ana de Miguel, CEO of EMVS, would give Maricarmen a new rental contract. But nothing is final: she must approve the terms before anything is signed. Reuters reported that Maricarmen was forcibly evicted on September 23, 2026, despite protests and attempts to halt the process.
Public pressure and media attention led Urbagestión to reconsider its position. Last Friday, the company tried to transfer the apartment to EMVS so Maricarmen could rent it at a lower rate through the city’s Reviva plan. EMVS rejected the offer because the apartment still had a mortgage, while Reviva accepts only debt-free properties. The program also uses a waiting list, not direct assignment.
With Reviva no longer an option, city officials mediated directly between Urbagestión and Maricarmen’s team. The new deal came through the city’s Rental Intermediation Service, which offers landlords and tenants added guarantees, including insurance against missed payments and a rule that tenants pay no more than 40% of their net income on rent. The details of Maricarmen’s new lease have not been made public.
BBC News Mundo reported that Urbagestión acquired the apartment in 2018 and soon sought to raise the rent from 500 euros to as much as 2,650 euros per month, later offering 1,650 euros, well above Maricarmen’s pension of around 1,350 to 1,400 euros. The legal dispute lasted several years and reached Spain’s Supreme Court, which ultimately sided with the company, paving the way for the eviction.
Maricarmen’s life in the Retiro flat had been stable until the dispute. She lived there before Urbagestión bought it in 2018. The rent was described as “irrisorio” for the area because she was a protected tenant. Her pension is about 1,400 euros, and she never missed a rent payment. The old rent was around 500 euros a month. In 2020, she was told her time was up. Urbagestión said the contract had already been subrogated twice. The company refused offers from the city and from private buyers or cultural figures to pay the difference or buy the flat. At one point, it demanded 1,600 euros in rent, far more than Maricarmen could afford.
The Sindicato de Inquilinas, which joined the talks, says its protest camp at Puerta del Sol will remain. The group says Maricarmen’s case is part of a much wider housing crisis.
Madrid is waiting for Maricarmen’s answer. Her case has become a symbol of the limits of tenant protections in the city’s housing market. Her lawyer, Duro, pointed out that Urbagestión took six years even to sit down and negotiate, illustrating the power landlords hold in Spain’s rental disputes.
Nothing is settled yet, but the property owner and city officials have shown unusual flexibility in a sector often constrained by strict contracts and legal roadblocks. Like the reported earlier story of public figures stepping up for family, this case shows how one dispute can prompt institutions to act. The question is whether the deal will set a new standard or remain a one-off in Madrid’s housing fight.
