At 87 years of age Maricarmen had lived in her home for 71 years, and she wished to end her days peacefully there too.

But when a vulture fund bought the entire building in the Retiro district of Madrid, her long-term contract of around $550 ended – and the new owners wanted five times the rent, far more than her pension could cover.

It was the fourth attempt at her eviction after activists had prevented the previous three with sit-ins and postponements, but this time was different.

The police were prepared and removed protesters, in some cases violently. Maricarmen, who suffers a disability that makes it difficult to walk, was taken from her home on a stretcher straight to hospital – much to the outrage of many in Spain.

Demonstrations that brought thousands of people onto the streets of Madrid evolved into a protest camp in the center of the city where hundreds of protesters have been sleeping since Saturday night, they say they'll stay until things change.

'A massive awakening' 

"I think this has been like a massive awakening, housing has to be for the people and not for profit," Alicia del Rio, a spokesperson from the Madrid Renters Association who organized Saturday's mass protest told CGTN.

Among the protesters that night was Juani Moreno, an 83-year-old who's also facing eviction.

"I've been fighting them since 2002," she says. "I've had cancer twice. Now they're trying to put me in an elderly residence but I don't want to go into a home."

Spain's house and rent prices have more than doubled in the past decade, affecting people old and young. Dana Fresneda, a 17-year-old at the protest, summed up the mood.

"I'm angry, we all are," Fresneda said. "I don't want to be living with my parents until I'm 35 just because the rent is too high because they prefer making money than serving the citizens."

What's causing the housing crisis? 

This cross-generational problem is a complex one, with many contributing factors leading to demand far outstripping supply. 

The success of Madrid as a city has encouraged waves of migration from Latin America and elsewhere. The rise of short-term rentals on platforms like AirBnB has taken tens of thousands of homes off the residential market. And poor planning by successive Spanish governments has allowed the social housing stock to dwindle to among the lowest levels in Europe.

Another issue in Spain is the conflict between the central and regional governments. In 2023, PM Pedro Sanchez's left-leaning coalition government passed a housing law aiming to enforce strict new rules on tourist lets – but the powerful Madrid regional government, led by the PP conservative Isabel Ayuso, has refused to enforce that law, preferring instead to rely on the market to regulate itself.

In Catalonia, the Socialist regional president Salvador Illa is working with the government to ban AirBnBs and implement 'La Ley de Vivienda' or the housing law. On Monday Sanchez met with Illa on a trip to Barcelona and said:

"We have to act on housing, there's no doubt about that, and we have to focus on accessibility, putting residential use ahead of tourism, as you are doing here in Catalonia. We have to increase the supply of accessible housing adapted to new social realities."

The previous day at a PSOE Socialist Party, rally Sanchez directly addressed Maricarmen saying:

"Maricarmen, we have a message for you: The government is working round the clock to present the Housing Royal Decree on Tuesday. And I call on the parliamentary groups to make one final effort to ensure it is passed by the national parliament, for Maricarmen's sake, and for the sake of the millions of Spaniards suffering from the housing crisis. Because this is not a question of ideology; it is a question of humanity."

Protesters set up camp to force change on historic '15M' site

Saturday's huge protest attracted tens of thousands onto the Madrid streets; organizers claimed an attendance above 200,000 people, while local authorities later claimed it was closer to 25,000. 

Afterwards, protesters unfolded tents and set up a camp in Plaza del Sol in central Madrid right in front of the Madrid regional government buildings.

"We're gonna camp here until we make sure that we have some immediate measures that become the first step towards a major change," Valeria Racu, chief spokesperson of the Madrid Renters Association told CGTN.

Racu went on to list the protesters' demands: laws that won't allow another eviction like that which happened to Maricarmen; a rent freeze; an end to speculation; more social housing; and a general strike if the changes don't happen.

Plaza del Sol is a significant site for this protest, echoing '15M' protests on 15 May 2011 on the very same spot, where anti-austerity protests led to the emergence of an entirely new political force in the Podemos party, changing the Spanish political landscape forever.

Now it's the housing crisis at the center of this new movement, protesters saying this crisis has reached a point of no return.

On Tuesday an emergency housing bill – a royal decree – will come to a vote aiming to grant some of the protester's demands. It's a crucial vote on a critical problem facing Spaniards a year out from general elections.