On Wednesday September 23, 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal was evicted from the Madrid flat where she had lived for more than 70 years. The vulture fund that owned the property had raised her monthly rent from €500 to €2,650. Removed on a stretcher and taken to hospital, Maricarmen became the focus of widespread anger over Spain’s housing crisis – where rents have increased 87 percent over the last decade. 

Thousands protested in Madrid that evening, with demonstrations spreading elsewhere in Spain, followed by a far larger march last Saturday of up to 300,000 people. In the immediate aftermath of that march a massive protest camp was step up in Madrid's iconic Puerta del Sol square – in a move that echoed the Indignados occupations 15 years earlier. For five nights in a row now, thousands of people have packed Sol demanding an end to speculation and soaring rental prices.

Today on Sobremesa Podcast, we talk to Hannah Fakir, an activist with the Sindicato de Inquilinas Madrid’s tenants union – who organized the non-violent resistance to Maricarmen’s eviction and are behind the protest camp. I talked to her in Sol as protestors chanted in the background. As always if you like what we are producing and want to keep the podcast sustainable, please consider donating to our buy me a coffee page.

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