Spain’s Locked Doors: Maricarmen, Housing Protests, and Racial Exclusion

Madrid’s housing crisis has acquired a name: Maricarmen Abascal. The eviction of the eighty-seven-year-old pensioner from her longtime home turned a struggle over one tenancy into a broader confrontation: who is permitted to remain in Spain’s cities, and who is systematically pushed out? For Black residents, Roma families, and people perceived as foreign, that barrier is compounded by outright racial discrimination in the rental market.

A lifetime in a home, then an eviction

Abascal was evicted on September 23, 2026, from her home in Madrid’s Retiro district. RTVE’s reporting describes the mobilization around her case organized by the Sindicato de Inquilinas de Madrid, the city’s tenants’ union. Her age and reduced mobility made the forced removal especially distressing, but the movement’s demand goes to the core of urban survival: what protections exist for working-class and elderly residents when shelter is treated as speculative capital?

On September 26, thousands demonstrated in Madrid demanding rent controls, an end to speculative evictions, and dignified housing, according to France 24. Protesters established an encampment in Puerta del Sol, where participants drew direct links between unaffordable rents, predatory landlords, and the racial discrimination immigrants and racial minorities face when seeking housing.

Abascal died on October 7. EL PAÍS reported that she had been hospitalized since the eviction; although an agreement had been reached allowing her to return, she never saw her home again. A memorial march followed on October 8.

Housing protests on video

The other locked door: racial discrimination

Unaffordable rent is only one barrier. Racial discrimination ensures that even qualified applicants are barred from securing a home.

In a 2020 Provivienda investigation presented by Spain’s Ministry of Inclusion, 72.5 percent of tested real estate agencies accepted landlords’ discriminatory instructions against foreign applicants. Nearly three out of four agencies complied.

The investigation used matched applicants with identical financial, family, and employment profiles. Even so, agencies required permanent employment contracts from 62 percent of foreign applicants, compared with 34 percent of Spanish applicants. Público documented outright refusals, excessive paperwork demands, and false claims that apartments were no longer available.

Real estate intermediaries actively enforce private racial exclusion. This gatekeeping pushes Black, Roma, and immigrant families into overpriced, precarious, or substandard housing and deepens segregation in Spain’s cities.

Who Lives in Spain: Explaining Racial Makeup

Spain’s official statistics follow a so-called color-blind approach that obscures racial discrimination. The state records nationality and country of birth, but does not collect data on race and ethnicity.

That absence creates an official blind spot. A Black or Roma Spanish citizen appears on paper simply as “Spanish,” making patterns of institutional racism invisible. Moroccan, Dominican, Colombian, and Senegalese residents are counted only by nationality. Without accurate data on racial and ethnic minorities, discrimination is harder to measure, harder to litigate, and easier to deny.

The INE annual census counted 49,128,297 residents on January 1, 2025, with 19.3 percent—9,464,210 people—born outside Spain (INE table 68525). Among the foreign-born:

These figures cannot capture Spain’s multigenerational Black community or its centuries-old Roma population. The Council of Europe has pressed Spain to collect equality data to confront entrenched anti-Black and anti-Roma discrimination.

Housing justice must include equality

Housing injustice in Spain is inseparable from racial and economic inequality. Rent burdens hit working-class households everywhere, but racialized and migrant communities bear the heaviest weight. Reporting from the Sol encampment records experiences of racism alongside crushing rents—the same families squeezed by prices are turned away because of who they are.

Article 20 of Law 15/2022 prohibits discrimination in access to housing. Yet the law means little without enforcement: agency testing, real penalties for discriminatory brokers, legal aid for tenants, and an end to informal screening.

In March 2025, Spain’s Council for the Elimination of Racial or Ethnic Discrimination called for oversight of real estate agencies and stronger anti-racism enforcement in housing. Without dismantling racial gatekeeping, no housing policy can claim to be just.

Maricarmen Abascal’s eviction exposed how vulnerable longtime tenants are to speculation. A truly transformative housing movement must guarantee that dignity extends to everyone—especially the Black, Roma, and immigrant residents who face closed doors before their applications are even read.