A decree with her name on it, and nothing in it for her

Select a line to play from there.

1. Maricarmen Abascal.
2. That's the sound of her being forced out of her own flat on a stretcher.
3. She had lived there since 1956, when her father first rented it.
4. Six days later, the Spanish government passed two emergency laws.
5. In Spain, people are already calling them the Maricarmen Decrees.
6. Pedro Sánchez · Prime Minister of SpainI've heard the PP say I'm a traitor on this too.He escuchado al PP decir que soy traidor también en esto.
7. I'm not sure what being a traitor means. A traitor to whom? To the vulture funds…No sé muy bien yo qué significa ser traidor. ¿A quién? ¿A los fondos buitre…?
8. That's the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez,
9. answering critics who called the new laws a betrayal.
10. So who is a home in Spain really for?
11. The people who live in it or the people who invest in it?
12. This is Pollar.
13. Everything in this episode comes from reporting already published,
14. and where people disagree, you'll hear each side in its own words.
15. Today, one eviction in Madrid, but also the story behind it.
16. Because this isn't the first time Spain has
17. watched people being carried out of their homes.
18. And how it ended up in parliament.
19. On Friday, Spain's Congress threw out both of the government's new laws.
20. And now the prime minister is deciding whether to call a snap election.
21. So first, why this one?
22. Spain sees tens of thousands of evictions a year.
23. Why did Maricarmen stop the country?
24. Reporting collected by Pollar says an investment
25. company called UrbaGestión bought her flat in 2020.
26. It wanted her out or paying far more.
27. Reports put its demand as high as two thousand six
28. hundred and fifty euros a month, about five times her rent.
29. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the owner won.
30. So legally, she lost.
31. Yes.
32. And on the twenty-third of September,
33. she left the home she'd known for seven decades on a stretcher and went to hospital.
34. It's worth being clear about what that means.
35. Nobody broke the law here.
36. The landlord went to court, the court sided with it,
37. and the police carried out a court order.
38. Which is exactly why it landed so hard.
39. If this is what the system looks like when it's working...
40. That image travelled.
41. That evening, thousands of people gathered in Madrid, not outside her building,
42. but outside a penthouse the regional government had bought with public money.
43. Their banners demanded it be given to her.
44. Which tells you the anger wasn't only about one landlord.
45. It was about who gets a home in Spain at all.
46. And the numbers behind that are stark.
47. A report by the trade union CCOO in August found that only thirty-one percent
48. of Spaniards aged eighteen to thirty-four live without help from their families.
49. Down from forty-one percent in 2016, the steepest fall in Europe.
50. This is the best educated generation Spain has ever had.
51. Youth unemployment has come down,
52. and still nearly seven in ten either live
53. with their parents or depend on their help.
54. Across the European Union, young people leave home at about twenty-six on average.
55. In Spain, it's thirty.
56. Thirty.
57. And the union's conclusion is that the barrier isn't jobs anymore.
58. It's the rent.
59. On Saturday the twenty-sixth,
60. the Tenants' Union set up camp in the Puerta del Sol, Madrid's central square.
61. By Wednesday, the union counted more than twelve hundred tents.
62. And there were camps in other cities too, from Seville to Palma to Barcelona.
63. So that's why this eviction.
64. It turned a statistic into a face,
65. an old woman and a generation that can't leave home,
66. looking at the same problem from opposite ends.
67. But to understand why the problem is this big,
68. you have to go back almost twenty years.
69. So how did Spain get here?
70. Where does this start?
71. By the early 2000s, Maricarmen had already lived in her flat for nearly fifty years.
72. Around her, Spain was building homes at an extraordinary rate.
73. Credit was cheap, prices kept rising,
74. and buying felt like the safest bet a family could make.
75. And then 2008.
76. The global financial crisis hit.
77. The bubble burst, and hundreds of thousands of
78. families were left with mortgages they couldn't pay.
79. Between 2007 and 2011, Human Rights Watch counted almost three
80. hundred and fifty thousand foreclosure cases started by banks.
81. Maricarmen wasn't one of them.
82. Her family rented.
83. But there was a cruel detail in Spanish law at the time.
84. If the bank took your home, you often didn't walk away from the debt.
85. The home was valued at a fraction of what it had been worth,
86. and you still owed the difference.
87. So people lost the house and kept the mortgage.
88. That's where a lot of today's anger was born.
89. In February 2009, in Barcelona, a group of activists founded the PAH,
90. the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages.
91. They physically stood in doorways to stop evictions.
92. By 2016, it said it had stopped more than two thousand of them.
93. One of its founders and its first spokesperson, Ada Colau,
94. went on to become mayor of Barcelona from 2015 to 2023.
95. So the people who stood in doorways ended up running the city.
96. Which tells you how deep this runs in Spanish politics.
97. Then comes the rescue.
98. In 2012, the European Union offered Spain up
99. to a hundred billion euros to rescue its banks.
100. One condition was a so-called bad bank to take
101. over the property loans the banks couldn't handle.
102. A company called Sareb, created in August 2012.
103. Okay.
104. Stop.
105. Bad Bank.
106. Vulture Fund.
107. What are they?
108. Imagine a bank full of loans that are never going
109. to be paid back and half-built flats nobody wants.
110. That bank can't lend to anyone while it's carrying all that,
111. so the government creates a separate company,
112. the Bad Bank, and moves all the rubbish into it.
113. The real bank is clean again.
114. The Bad Bank's job is to sell the rubbish off slowly for whatever it can get.
115. And the vulture funds?
116. Those are the buyers, big international investment
117. funds that buy up things when they're cheap because
118. someone is desperate to sell: flats, loans,
119. sometimes whole blocks with tenants still living in them.
120. Then they wait for prices to rise and raise the rent.
121. So vulture because they arrive when something's dying.
122. That's the insult, yes.
123. The funds would say they're investors who bought what
124. nobody else wanted and put money into a market that had none.
125. And the most famous example is in Madrid.
126. In 2013, Madrid's city housing company, under the then mayor Ana Botella,
127. sold 1,860 social housing flats to a company owned by
128. the American fund Blackstone for about 128 million euros.
129. The sale was fought over in the courts for years.
130. In 2020, Spain's Supreme Court confirmed that the former mayor was cleared.
131. So families who'd rented from the city woke up with a landlord they'd never met.
132. Which is Maricarmen's story too, decades later.
133. Her landlord wasn't a family who owned one flat.
134. It was an investment company, UrbaGestión, which bought her home in 2020.
135. So that's one wave, the crash, the evictions, the funds.
136. What's the second?
137. The second is tourists.
138. Last year, Spain had a record 96.8 million foreign visitors,
139. according to the National Statistics Office.
140. Almost 100 million in a country of almost 50 million people.
141. And a lot of them don't stay in hotels.
142. Official figures count about 340,000 tourist flats in Spain.
143. Each one is a flat that could, in principle, be somebody's home.
144. Which brings us to Barcelona.
145. In July 2024, around 2,800 people marched through the city,
146. according to police, and some of them sprayed tourists with water pistols.
147. The signs said, "Barcelona is not for sale."
148. And it didn't stay in Barcelona.
149. In June, organisers say more than 25,000 people marched in Málaga,
150. where rents have gone up by about a third in a decade.
151. In July, in Palma, organisers say 70,000 marched against mass tourism in Mallorca.
152. Police said 25,000.
153. At the end, police fired rubber bullets.
154. So the anger is everywhere tourists are,
155. but Barcelona is where the city itself acted first, and the answer was drastic.
156. Jaume Collboni · Mayor of BarcelonaThe Catalan Parliament's latest regulation allows us, and we will use it,La última regulación del Parlament de Catalunya nos permite, nos vamos a acoger a ello,
157. not to renew tourist apartment licences from November…el hecho de no renovar licencias de apartamentos turísticos a partir de noviembre…
158. Barcelona's mayor, Jaume Collboni, announced that from 2029,
159. the tourist apartment, as it's currently known, would disappear from the city.
160. That's every one of Barcelona's 10,000 or so
161. licensed tourist flats gone by November 2028.
162. The rules were challenged, and in March 2025,
163. Spain's Constitutional Court upheld the Catalan law behind them.
164. And nationally?
165. Did anyone try to fix the whole thing?
166. In 2023, Spain passed a national housing law.
167. It let regions declare areas where the rental
168. market was under pressure and cap rents there.
169. Catalonia was the first to use it in March 2024.
170. And did it work?
171. It depends who you ask.
172. One academic study found the number of new
173. rental contracts fell where the cap applied.
174. Its effect on rents was much less clear.
175. Supporters say it protected tenants.
176. Critics say it pushed landlords out of renting.
177. So that's how Spain got here, a crash that took people's
178. homes and left them the debt, funds that bought the pieces,
179. a tourism boom that turned flats into holiday lets,
180. and a generation priced out of all of it.
181. Which is the world Maricarmen's landlord was operating in
182. and the world the government tried to change in six days.
183. A quick word about Pollar.
184. It's free to read with no ads and no data sales,
185. and every story links to the reporting behind it.
186. Get the twice daily brief on the web or in the app for iPhone and Android.
187. To help keep Pollar independent, become a member.
188. Supporter from $2.99 a month adds listening, offline reading, and weekly deep dives.
189. Founder adds a private community and a say in what comes next.
190. Back to Madrid.
191. The tents are still up in the Puerta del Sol.
192. And on Friday, Spain's parliament voted on the
193. government's answer to Maricarmen's eviction.
194. This is where the whole story has been heading.
195. Six days after she was carried out, the government passed two emergency laws.
196. People here call them the Maricarmen Decrees.
197. And an emergency law works differently?
198. It does.
199. In Spain, an emergency decree comes into force straight away,
200. but then parliament has 30 working days to approve it.
201. If it says no, the law is scrapped.
202. That vote was on Friday.
203. So before we get to the vote, what was actually in them?
204. Three big ideas.
205. One, if you're vulnerable and you have nowhere else to go,
206. you can't be evicted until 2030.
207. If you can't pay, the state pays your landlord the rent they're owed.
208. Two, big investment funds can't snap up homes on the cheap.
209. If a flat is worth €200,000, a fund can't buy it for less than 140,000.
210. So no more bargain hunting by the vultures.
211. That's the idea.
212. And three is the big one.
213. At the moment, a rental contract in Spain comes to an end after a few years.
214. When it does, the landlord can ask you to leave or ask for a lot more money.
215. Which is what happened to Maricarmen.
216. Right.
217. Under the second decree, as long as you pay and keep to the rules,
218. your contract just keeps rolling on.
219. A landlord can still take the flat back for a good reason,
220. like needing it for their own family,
221. but they have to give a year's notice and pay a year's rent in compensation.
222. So for a tenant, that's security.
223. And for a landlord, it's a flat they can't easily get back,
224. which is why that part is in its own decree.
225. So if parliament voted it down, the rest could survive.
226. Then here's what I actually want to know.
227. Would any of this have saved Maricarmen?
228. Honestly, probably not directly.
229. The new laws didn't reach back to cases the courts have already decided,
230. and the courts ruled that her family's old lease had run out when it passed to her.
231. The Tenants' Union says rules like these would have protected her,
232. but nobody can say for sure.
233. So Friday, what happened?
234. The vote came just after 3:00 in the afternoon.
235. First, the decree with the eviction ban.
236. The Speaker of the Congress, Francina Armengol, read out the result.
237. Francina Armengol · Speaker of the Congress of DeputiesSo, here is the result of the vote.Entonces, vamos a dar el resultado de la votación.
238. Votes cast, 350. In favour, 172. Against, 178.Votos emitidos, 350. Votos a favor, 172. Votos en contra, 178.
239. No abstentions. The royal decree-law is therefore repealed.Ninguna abstención. En consecuencia, queda derogado el Real Decreto-ley.
240. 172 for, 178 against.
241. Repealed.
242. And it had already been the law.
243. It came into force that week,
244. and it had already stopped at least one eviction in Barcelona.
245. Then it was gone.
246. And the second one, the rolling contracts?
247. That lost by more, 166 to 184.
248. So the part everyone expected to survive didn't,
249. and the part they expected to fail failed badly.
250. So who voted no?
251. The Popular Party and Vox, as expected.
252. They'd said all along they were against both.
253. But they don't have a majority on their own.
254. No.
255. The deciding votes were Junts,
256. seven MPs from a Catalan party whose votes put Sánchez back in power in 2023.
257. On Thursday, they announced they'd vote no.
258. Why?
259. In their words, many of the measures will
260. have the opposite effect of what is intended.
261. Fewer flats for rent, higher prices,
262. and an even harder time for people on low incomes.
263. So the landlord's argument.
264. Partly.
265. But in the chamber, their spokesperson, Míriam Nogueras,
266. also attacked the laws from the other side.
267. She said they still let speculators buy homes and still let them evict people.
268. Too much for some, not enough for others.
269. And on the second decree, the Basque Nationalist Party, the PNV,
270. voted no as well, another party that usually backs the government.
271. And everyone else?
272. Voted yes.
273. The Socialists, their coalition partners in Sumar,
274. and the parties further to the left.
275. The Tenants' Union had called splitting the package in two a disgrace,
276. but it backed both decrees.
277. And it got personal.
278. It did.
279. The Catalan left-wing MP, Gabriel Rufián, held up a 50 euro note at Junts.
280. That, he told them, was their flag.
281. And then there's Madrid, where the fight has become about who's to blame.
282. Sánchez accused Madrid's conservative regional government
283. of caring more about that penthouse than about Maricarmen.
284. The region's president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, hit back.
285. Ayuso says the courts applied the law and the region
286. offered Maricarmen a place in a care home three times.
287. And she says about 25,000 people are evicted in Spain every year under
288. national laws that Sánchez's government has had eight years to change.
289. So that's the politics.
290. But even if the laws had passed, would they have worked?
291. The Bank of Spain says the real problem is simple.
292. Spain isn't building enough homes.
293. Every year, more than 200,000 new households need somewhere to live,
294. and the country finishes only about 100,000 new homes.
295. So protecting the people who already have a
296. home doesn't create homes for the ones who don't.
297. And the builders had already warned it could make things worse.
298. The head of Spain's property developers said builders called him within two days,
299. planning to sell new flats instead of renting them out.
300. The government and the tenants answer that the
301. problem isn't only how many homes there are,
302. it's who owns them and what they're used for.
303. The funds, the holiday lets, the empty flats.
304. Both can be true.
305. Protection keeps people like Maricarmen in their homes.
306. It doesn't, on its own, build the next one.
307. So where does Friday leave Spain?
308. Possibly heading for an election.
309. Before the vote, Sánchez made a speech in the chamber that nobody had expected.
310. He told the Popular Party and Junts that if the laws fell,
311. the blame would be theirs.
312. Pedro Sánchez · Prime Minister of Spain…the interests of a property elite, which may be legitimate,…los intereses de unas élites inmobiliarias, que será legítimo,
313. but are certainly not the interests of ordinary people.pero que no es desde luego el interés de la gente corriente.
314. Do the right thing, because otherwise history will judge youHagan lo correcto, porque creo que si no, la historia les juzgará
315. sooner than you think, and more harshly than you imagine.antes de lo que creen y con más contundencia de la que imaginan.
316. Do the right thing, he told them, because otherwise history will
317. judge you sooner than you think and more harshly than you imagine.
318. Sooner than you think.
319. A lot of people heard that as a hint.
320. After the vote, government sources told Spanish media
321. that Sánchez is considering a snap general election.
322. The date being talked about is the twenty-ninth of November.
323. He has no public engagements this weekend.
324. He's using it to decide.
325. And there's a deadline.
326. In Spain, an election is held fifty-four days after it's called.
327. So for the twenty-ninth of November, he'd have to call it by Tuesday.
328. Otherwise, the next one isn't due until next year.
329. The opposition wants it now.
330. The leader of the conservative Popular Party,
331. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, spoke after the vote.
332. Alberto Núñez Feijóo · Leader of the Popular PartyNo decree was voted on today to help Maricarmen, or anyone.Hoy no se ha votado ningún decreto para ayudar a Maricarmen ni a nadie.
333. No decree was voted on today to help Maricarmen or anyone, he said.
334. And to Sánchez, you have your excuse.
335. Set the date.
336. Dissolve Parliament.
337. Call the election.
338. And outside the Congress, while all this was going on,
339. there were people banging pots and pans.
340. A speaker at the protest outside the Congress · Housing protest, MadridSo let them be clear: we're going to keep fighting!¡Así que lo tengan claro! ¡Vamos a seguir peleando!
341. General strike!¡Huelga general!
342. So let them be clear, one speaker told the crowd.
343. We're going to keep fighting.
344. And the chant was for a general strike.
345. The Tenants' Union says the camp goes on.
346. So one eviction moved a government in six days,
347. and Parliament undid it in an afternoon.
348. And the woman those laws were named after still hasn't gone home.
349. As for Maricarmen,
350. on Tuesday she accepted a deal with the company that owns her flat.
351. When she leaves hospital, she can go home on an eight-year lease,
352. paying no more than thirty percent of her income.
353. But she's still in hospital,
354. and the people around her say they're worried about her health.
355. The camp in the Puerta del Sol is still there.
356. The union says this was never only about one woman.
357. And it isn't only about Spain.
358. Look across Europe this year.
359. In Berlin, organisers say eleven thousand people marched
360. in September for rent caps and a ban on evictions.
361. A German trade union study this summer found rents in the
362. country's forty biggest cities up fifty-one percent in a decade.
363. And somewhere behind those numbers are people like Maricarmen.
364. We just don't know their names.
365. And next door, Portugal went the other way.
366. In July, its government approved plans for faster evictions for
367. unpaid rent and to scrap a cap on rent rises in new contracts.
368. Parliament is still debating them.
369. Its argument: loosen the rules and some of the country's estimated two
370. hundred and fifty thousand empty homes will come back onto the market.
371. So two neighbours, the same problem, opposite answers.
372. Spain is betting on protection.
373. Portugal is betting on the market.
374. And Brussels has now weighed in.
375. In September, the European Commission proposed an Affordable Housing Act,
376. letting cities restrict holiday rentals in the most stressed areas,
377. the kind of thing Barcelona has been fighting in court to do.
378. The Commission's Executive Vice President, Teresa Ribera, said that when the market
379. fails to deliver an affordable home,
380. public authorities have a responsibility to act.
381. Which brings it back to Spain,
382. because the next few weeks could decide which of those two paths it takes.
383. If Sánchez does call an election, the polls don't agree on who'd win.
384. The government's own pollster, the CIS, had his socialists ahead last month.
385. Most private polls put Feijóo's Popular Party first,
386. and some suggest the Popular Party and Vox together would have a majority.
387. And the Popular Party has its own housing plan.
388. It's been before the Senate since last year.
389. It would speed up building permits and scrap the rent
390. caps in the two thousand and twenty-three housing law.
391. So closer to Portugal, build more, regulate less.
392. And if there's no election,
393. Sánchez still faces a parliament that won't pass his housing laws.
394. Either way, whatever replaces the Maricarmen decrees, if anything does,
395. will be decided by the same parliament that just said no or by the next one.
396. But the tents are still up.
397. And that's it for this episode.
398. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of Pollar.
399. Sources for this episode are at pollar.news.