Tens of thousands of protesters marched in Madrid and other cities in Spain on Saturday to demand affordable housing, a day after lawmakers rejected relief measures for tenants.
The demonstrations extended a crisis that has gone on for more than a week, triggered by the September 23 forced expulsion of a pensioner, 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal, from her Madrid flat.
The defeat was another political setback for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and has renewed questions over whether his minority government can survive until the next scheduled general election in 2027.
His government’s proposed measures, which included automatic renewal of tenancy contracts and restrictions on evicting vulnerable tenants, were shot down by opposition parties on Friday in Spain’s parliament.
The defeat infuriated those protesting the country’s increasingly expensive housing market.
Hundreds of protesters have been occupying a tent city set up a week ago in the heart of Madrid to press for reforms.
On Saturday demonstrators marched through the capital’s streets. Authorities said 70,000 people were protesting. Organisers put the figure at 500,000.
Javier, a solar panel installer of 31, explained that “we are demanding a fundamental right: decent housing, stability and conditions allowing us to construct a decent life project”.
He added that “I spend half of my salary on a tiny room”.
“What we are feeling in the streets is a new energy that we haven’t seen in a long time, and energy that is showing that eight days of people’s power can achieve more than eight years of progressive government,” Valeria Racu, one of the spokespeople of the Tenants’ Union organising the protest, said in a statement.
“Now begins real politics — politics which has always belonged to the people and which will return once and for all to the streets,” she said.
Housing has for years been a top concern for Spaniards as supply falls short of demand, with rents and house prices rising as elsewhere in the European Union.
Average rents in Spain have almost doubled over the past decade, while asking prices for homes have risen by about 90 percent, according to real estate website Idealista.
Abascal’s eviction catalysed long-running anger about runaway housing costs.
The pensioner was forced to leave the Madrid flat where she had lived for more than seven decades after it was acquired by an investment company that sought to increase her rent by 275 percent, according to housing campaigners.
The backlash led the property’s new owners to reach a deal allowing her to return to the flat at a low rent.
