(Adnkronos) – Candles, processions and moments of silence, but also new accusations and political clashes further heating up the climate towards the early elections on November 29. Spain remembers Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old who became a symbol of the housing crisis after being evicted on September 23 from her Madrid home where she had lived for almost 70 years and died yesterday in hospital. Her disappearance has given new impetus to the protests that have been sweeping the country for days, while a harsh debate on the political responsibilities of the matter has opened up within institutions and among parties.
In Madrid, the Puerta del Sol filled with candles during the vigil organized after the news of her death, and at least a thousand people marched through the night to the Congress. “Maricarmen lives, the struggle continues,” was the slogan chanted by protesters. New events are scheduled in the capital and other cities, from Seville to Malaga, Cordoba, and Caceres, while the Tenants’ Union has organized a march for this evening from Puerta del Sol to the building in the Retiro district from which the 87-year-old had been evicted.
In an already fully electoral climate, institutions were also divided on tributes to the woman. According to El Pais, neither the Assembly nor the Madrid City Council observed an official minute of silence. Mas Madrid and the Socialist Party (Psoe) nonetheless remembered Maricarmen separately. In the Valencian Cortes, however, the minute of silence proposed by the socialists was observed by the Popular Party (Pp), the Valencian Socialist Party (Pspv-Psoe), and Compromis, while Vox chose to leave the Chamber. In the Cortes of Aragon, Pp and Vox rejected a similar socialist proposal. Finally, in the Senate, President Pedro Rollan, of the Pp, denied the Psoe’s request to observe a minute of silence, explaining that there were no precedents applicable to a similar case, but expressed solidarity with the family and joined the “collective grief of society,” a position also shared by the popular group.
The tones of the clash between political forces were very harsh, as they more or less explicitly accused each other of having responsibility in the matter. The federal coordinator of United Left (Izquierda Unida), Antonio Maillo, pointed the finger at the “vultures” who allegedly forced the elderly woman to leave her home “at the cost of her health and then her death.” Even more explicit was the leader of Podemos, Ione Belarra, according to whom the 87-year-old “did not die,” but was “killed by the vultures who wanted to take her home, by the judicial system and by the administrations that allowed it.” More institutional were the words of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who had already expressed his condolences yesterday evening: “All my affection to Maricarmen’s family and loved ones. A hug also to all of us who feel this loss as our own today.”
Vox’s far-right, however, lashed out at the socialist government. “They killed Maricarmen,” the party wrote on X, accusing the left of having “shamelessly used the suffering of an elderly woman to mount a campaign that hides the government’s responsibilities in the housing crisis.” Very different tones were chosen by the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, who urged against political exploitation of the 87-year-old’s death: “No campaign, no party, no use for one’s own advantage. In the face of a person’s death, there must only be respect.”
