Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old Madrid pensioner whose eviction from the home where she had lived for more than 70 years triggered demonstrations across Spain, has died in hospital. Her case has pushed the country’s housing crisis to the centre of a general election campaign that will culminate in a vote on 29 November.

María del Carmen Abascal, widely known as Maricarmen, died on Wednesday at Madrid’s Gregorio Marañón hospital, where she had been receiving treatment since being evicted from her flat in the Retiro district on 23 September. The Madrid Tenants’ Union, which had supported her during the long-running dispute with the property owner, announced her death. The cause has not been disclosed.

Abascal had lived in the property since 1956, when her father first rented it. The tenancy later passed to her mother and subsequently to Abascal under Spain’s old protected-rent system. A legal dispute began after the property changed hands and Urbagestión Desarrollo e Inversión challenged her right to remain under the inherited tenancy. The courts eventually sided with the owner after a dispute over the rules governing successive transfers of old rental contracts.

She had been paying about €500 a month. Urbagestión sought a new rent of €2,650 before subsequently proposing €1,650, still above Abascal’s pension of about €1,350 a month. Three earlier attempts to remove her from the property had failed before the eviction was finally carried out on 23 September. Abascal left the building on a stretcher and was taken to hospital.

Her removal quickly became a focus for wider anger over housing costs. Thousands demonstrated in Madrid and other Spanish cities, while protesters established an encampment in Puerta del Sol under slogans including “Ni una Maricarmen más” — “Not one more Maricarmen”. Speaking from hospital after the eviction, Abascal urged demonstrators to continue campaigning and “defend what is yours”.

After negotiations involving Abascal’s representatives, Urbagestión and Madrid’s municipal housing company, an agreement was eventually reached that would have allowed her to return to the flat under a new eight-year tenancy at an affordable rent. She remained in hospital, however, and was never able to return home.

The tenants’ union said the agreement had arrived too late and described the events surrounding the eviction as a turning point in Spain’s housing debate. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez offered condolences to Abascal’s family and those affected by her death. The government had previously described her eviction as the type of case that new housing legislation was intended to prevent.

The political consequences have extended well beyond Madrid. On 29 September, Sánchez’s government approved two emergency housing decrees covering eviction protection, rental contracts and speculative property purchases. One measure would have extended protections for vulnerable households facing eviction until 2030, while the package also proposed restrictions on certain property acquisitions and additional safeguards for tenants.

Congress rejected both decrees on 2 October, with the PP, Vox and Junts voting against the measures. Opponents argued that tighter intervention in the rental market would discourage landlords from offering properties for rent and further restrict supply. Supporters of the measures said stronger tenant protection was necessary amid rapidly rising housing costs.

Three days later Sánchez announced a general election for 29 November, saying he needed a broader parliamentary majority to pursue further reforms. As EU Today reported following the announcement, the election brings an early end to a parliament in which the minority coalition had become increasingly dependent on shifting alliances to pass legislation.

The dispute comes against a substantial housing shortage. The Bank of Spain estimates that the gap between new homes and household formation accumulated to around 750,000 properties between 2021 and 2025. Official data cited in the government’s housing legislation also show that 26.8 per cent of Spanish households renting at market prices spent more than 40 per cent of their income on rent in 2025, compared with an EU average of 18.6 per cent.

Pressure is likely to continue during the campaign. Spain’s main trade union confederations, CCOO and UGT, have backed a nationwide general strike for 11 November over the housing crisis, less than three weeks before polling day. It will be the first general strike jointly backed by the two organisations in 14 years.

Abascal’s death therefore comes as a personal case that began with a dispute over one Madrid flat has become inseparable from a much larger argument over rents, property rights, housing supply and the degree to which the Spanish state should intervene in the market. Those questions are now set to form one of the principal dividing lines of Spain’s November election.

The Alfa Watan, a ship sailing under the flag of Togo, and the Able, a vessel flying the flag of Palau, were targeted by naval and aerial drones on Tuesday (6 October) morning in the Black Sea near the Bulgarian coast.

The Alfa Watan sank, and rescuers at the scene found only an overturned boat, life jackets, and fragments of the ship’s equipment, according to Bulgarian prime minister Rumen Radev.

The 18-member crew of the Able caught fire, but was successfully evacuated to the port of Varna.

“This is an unacceptable attack in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone,” Radev said after an emergency government meeting on Tuesday.

Bulgaria had discussed the drone attack inside the EU and Nato, he added.

It came after a drone also sank a Turkish-owned grain ship, the Royad Mammadov, killing two sailors, on Monday.

But even though Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky was quick to blame Russia, the perpetrators have not been formally identified yet, in a grey-zone conflict in which deniability is a tactic.

Russia and Ukraine have been escalating attacks on ships for several months in an effort to disrupt each other’s export economies.

And Moscow’s attacks have largely halted Ukraine’s maritime exports of agricultural products, while Kyiv’s attacks have forced Russia to seek alternative routes for exports.

“The situation in the Black Sea is increasingly concerning,” said EU Commission’s president Ursula von der Leyen on X on Tuesday.

Ukraine has “proposed concrete steps to de-escalate the situation”, also said Zelensky.

But for all his good will, the attacks were just part of a broader deterioration in Europe’s security environment, covering also Nato’s eastern and southern borders.

‘Shadow war’

For Czech president Peter Pavel, speaking to Czech daily Deník N on 22 September, the most imminent danger came from a false-flag attack in Estonia or Latvia, to test Nato’s resolve.

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Pedro Sánchez has turned a parliamentary defeat over housing into a general election on 29th November.

The calculation is clear: force Spain’s political argument onto territory more favourable to the left before migration, corruption allegations and parliamentary paralysis return to the foreground. But the polls suggest that the gamble could still deliver power to the centre-right People’s Party and Vox.

Pedro Sánchez’s decision to dissolve Spain’s parliament nine months ahead of schedule is more than an admission that his minority government had reached the limits of what it could achieve in the Congress of Deputies. It is an attempt to choose the terms on which his government will be judged.

The immediate trigger was the defeat of two emergency housing decrees after the conservative People’s Party (PP), Vox and Catalan separatist Junts voted against them. Housing had already moved rapidly to the centre of Spanish politics following the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from the Madrid flat where she had lived for 71 years, followed by large demonstrations across the country. EU Today has previously reported on both the housing protests across Spain and Sánchez’s subsequent decision to call the election.

The prime minister is now attempting to convert legislative weakness into electoral advantage.

In his announcement on 5 October, Sánchez presented the election as a choice between a broader progressive majority capable of advancing social legislation and an opposition that had obstructed measures on housing and other domestic priorities. The government reinforced that strategy a day later by approving revised versions of the two housing decrees, containing 21 measures including tax incentives, assistance for first-time buyers and measures intended to increase supply. They will require validation by the Diputación Permanente, the standing parliamentary body that remains after dissolution.

The political calculation is straightforward. Housing offers Sánchez an issue on which anger is directed not only at government but at landlords, property investors, regional authorities and political parties opposing stronger regulation. The eviction of Abascal gave that argument a human symbol and transformed a long-running affordability problem into an immediate political confrontation.

That does not mean the strategy will work.

Most polling continues to place the PSOE behind the PP. Surveys put the Socialists at roughly 28 per cent, while Vox has risen to around 18 per cent. A PP-Vox combination is currently the only bloc consistently projected to command an outright parliamentary majority. One Sigma Dos survey published after the election announcement projected the two parties winning 203 of the Congress’s 350 seats.

Sánchez therefore appears to be playing less for immediate dominance than for mobilisation.

His problem before the housing protests was not simply the strength of the right. The broader left had become fragmented, while the government was being damaged by disputes over migration, particularly following the crisis in Ceuta, as well as corruption investigations involving figures associated with the PSOE. At the same time, Junts had become an increasingly unreliable parliamentary partner, leaving the government unable to guarantee major legislation or a new budget.

Housing changes the subject.

It allows Sánchez to argue that the central question is not whether his coalition has governed smoothly, but whether voters want a parliament prepared to intervene more aggressively in the housing market. The PP, however, is contesting precisely that framing. Alberto Núñez Feijóo argues that the housing shortage is itself a product of Sánchez’s eight years in government and has promised to raise annual construction towards 200,000 homes while reducing taxes.

The election may therefore develop into a dispute over responsibility rather than diagnosis. Both sides accept that housing has become a major national problem; they differ sharply over whether regulation or additional supply should dominate the response.

There is also a wider European dimension. Housing affordability is increasingly politically disruptive across the EU, including in major cities where construction has failed to keep pace with household formation, migration and demand for short-term accommodation. EU Today has examined similar pressures in Berlin’s housing market. Spain could now provide a test of whether housing can become powerful enough as an electoral issue to reverse the wider European movement towards the right.

For Ukraine, however, the consequences are likely to be less dramatic than Spain’s domestic political contest might suggest.

Sánchez committed €1 billion in bilateral military support to Ukraine for 2026, with Spain putting its cumulative bilateral military assistance since Russia’s full-scale invasion at almost €4 billion. Madrid has also trained more than 9,000 Ukrainian military personnel.

Spain is also home to a considerably larger Ukrainian community than the roughly 300,000 figure frequently cited. Government data showed 353,009 Ukrainian nationals holding valid residence documentation at the end of June, including 262,782 under temporary protection.

A PP-led government would alter Madrid’s domestic priorities and potentially its approach to defence spending and migration, particularly if Vox were required to sustain a parliamentary majority. Yet there is little basis at present for assuming that a change of government would produce a reversal of Spain’s fundamental position on Russia’s invasion or membership of the European and Atlantic security structures supporting Ukraine.

The more immediate question is whether Sánchez can make housing important enough to overcome the electoral arithmetic confronting him.

Calling the election has allowed him to escape a parliament in which his legislative coalition was steadily disintegrating and to enter a campaign around an issue capable of mobilising his electorate. It has not changed the fact that the PP and Vox begin that campaign with the stronger numbers.

Sánchez has chosen the battlefield. On 29th November, Spain will decide whether that was enough.