On 23 September 2026, 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal left her Madrid home and asked Pedro Sánchez to change Spain's eviction system. From her hospital bed, she is urging the Council of Ministers to approve a proposed decree; reports say she faced at least four court-ordered eviction attempts.
A video released by the Sindicato de Inquilinas shows Abascal calling for a decree that could change the system behind her removal. She wants the government to take the first legal step.
The request now has a name. Abascal calls the proposed measure the decreto Maricarmen and wants the Council of Ministers to approve it this Tuesday. The proposal would then go to Congress for ratification. It is not law.
That distinction matters. Abascal is not announcing a completed reform. She is asking the government to start changing the rules that allowed the eviction to proceed.
The New York Times reported that the case has grown beyond a single housing dispute and become part of a wider debate about tenant protection in Spain.
She had lived in the same flat since 1956, 71 years before the eviction. The removal left her severely exhausted and anxious, while the stress of the ordeal preceded her hospital admission.
The new recording is her second video since that admission. She still has difficulty speaking normally. El País described the eviction and her hospitalization as sources of growing public outrage, both social and political.
Her appeal is aimed at Pedro Sánchez and her supporters. She asks Sánchez to put the decree before the Council of Ministers, and supporters to back an online petition launched by the Sindicato de Inquilinas. She also wants pressure to continue for the right to housing.
SpainEnglish reported that Abascal has a recognised disability rate of 50% and that Madrid City Council offered her emergency accommodation in a facility for older people. The tenant campaign argued that public pressure should have stopped the eviction.
The case follows earlier coverage of Abascal's long tenancy in Madrid. Euronews reported that she was taken from the apartment in a wheelchair or on a stretcher. The image helped turn the case into a symbol of Spain's affordable-housing crisis.
The latest video shifts attention to the legal mechanism behind the eviction. Abascal says it must change so other people do not face the same result.
She also urged supporters to attend a demonstration scheduled for Saturday at 18.30 in Puerta del Sol. The event ties into the online petition and the demand for indefinite contracts. The Sindicato de Inquilinas has used protests alongside its solidarity campaign to press the government for urgent housing measures.
The campaign says collective action could secure indefinite contracts and advance its housing demands. Abascal asks supporters to stand with her, while calling on the government to turn sympathy into a concrete measure.
The government still has a proposal, not an enacted reform. Congress would also have to ratify any decree approved by the Council of Ministers. The name decreto Maricarmen gives the demand a focus. Only a measure approved by the government and ratified by Congress could change Spain's eviction system.
