Status: Eviction executed 23 September 2026. Maricarmen remains admitted at Hospital Gregorio Marañón. Government says a housing royal decree is being prepared for the Council of Ministers on Tuesday, 29 September. Encampment continues at Puerta del Sol.

Maricarmen, an 87-year-old woman with a recognized 50 percent disability, was removed on a stretcher from the Madrid apartment where she had lived since 1956. The fourth scheduled eviction attempt succeeded on Wednesday after a multi-hour police and court operation in the Retiro district. The case has become a national symbol of Spain’s housing crisis, UN criticism, street protests, and a political fight over who is responsible for vulnerable tenants when old rent contracts meet investment owners.

What happened

On 23 September 2026 a judicial commission executed the eviction at Calle Alcalde Sáinz de Baranda, in Madrid’s Retiro neighborhood. Neighbors, the Sindicato de Inquilinas, and supporters had tried to block three earlier dates. This time a large police deployment cleared the street and the building. After more than seven hours, Maricarmen was carried out on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to Hospital Gregorio Marañón.

Hospital staff treated her for exhaustion, anxiety, and the physical strain of the operation. She has remained admitted for observation. Relatives say a likely next stop is a small apartment in Segovia shared with her cousin Vicente. City officials say they offered an emergency municipal-residence place, which she has not accepted as a home replacement.

The legal dispute

The apartment was rented under a 1956 “renta antigua” contract signed by her father. After his death the contract passed to her mother (1960) and, after the mother’s death in 2005, to Maricarmen. In 2018 the building was acquired by an investment vehicle, later identified as Urbagestión Desarrollo e Inversión.

The owner argued that Spanish urban-lease law does not allow a second subrogation to run for life unless a disability threshold of 65 percent is met. Maricarmen’s recognized disability is 50 percent. A first-instance court initially sided with her. The Provincial Court reversed that ruling; the Supreme Court later left the owner’s position standing. Execution then followed, after several postponements.

UN warning and political fallout

In June the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asked Spain to freeze the eviction until an adequate housing alternative existed. Amnesty International Spain said the 23 September removal violated that protective measure and exposed the weakness of housing-rights guarantees for tenants.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called the eviction a social tragedy Spain should not accept and pointed at Madrid regional and city authorities (PP). The regional government answered that tens of thousands of evictions occur each year and that this file was one court-ordered case among many. The judge who signed the launch order was executing a final civil judgment, not rewriting lease law.

From hospital bed to “decreto Maricarmen”

From Gregorio Marañón, Maricarmen has released short video messages through the tenants’ union. She thanked supporters, said she failed to keep the house but not the fight, and asked Pedro Sánchez to take a first legislative step against the system that allowed the eviction.

“I would like to be there in the encampment with you. From here I ask you for courage. Fight. Defend what is yours.” — Maricarmen, message to protesters in Sol, 27–28 September 2026

Sánchez replied that the government is working “against the clock” to take a housing royal decree to the Council of Ministers on Tuesday. Campaigners have labeled the expected package the “decreto Maricarmen.” An encampment in Puerta del Sol and marches in Madrid and other cities have continued through the weekend.

What is still unresolved

• Hospital discharge date and a stable housing plan that Maricarmen accepts
• Whether Tuesday’s Council of Ministers actually adopts an emergency housing decree, and what it covers (eviction moratoria, vulnerable tenants, old-rent cases)
• Any further civil or political review of how UN interim measures interact with a final Spanish court judgment
• Whether the emptied apartment returns to the market at a market rent

The legal title question is largely closed in the Spanish courts. The political question is not: how an elderly disabled tenant with seven decades in the same home can lose it without a ready alternative, and whether national law will change before the next similar file reaches a launch date.