Who was Maricarmen, the woman who lived 71 years in the same house and ended up giving name to the protests for housing

In Spain, the eviction of long-term tenants in primary residences is currently conditioned by a framework of regulations that combine the protection of property with enhanced protection for people in vulnerable situations.

The basic framework is:

• Law 29/1994, on Urban Leases (LAU), which regulates the rental contract, its duration, extensions, and grounds for termination.
• Law 1/2000, on Civil Procedure (LEC), which establishes the judicial eviction and eviction order procedure.
• Law 12/2023, of May 24, on the Right to Housing, which modifies both the LAU and the LEC, introducing additional requirements and guarantees regarding evictions and vulnerability.
• A set of COVID-era royal decree-laws (in particular Royal Decree-Law 11/2020, of March 31, and its amendments by Royal Decree-Law 37/2020, of December 22, Royal Decree-Law 8/2021, of May 4, and subsequent extensions such as Royal Decree-Laws 11/2022, 20/2022, and 21/2021), which have established periods of suspension of procedures and evictions in vulnerable situations and compensations to owners.

Causes and basic premise of eviction

From a substantive point of view, eviction requires the existence of a contract subject to the LAU and a legal or contractual cause for termination (for example, non-payment of rent or other relevant breaches provided for in the LAU and the contract). Without a valid title or cause for termination, a typical rental eviction is not possible.

Additionally, the contract must have exhausted or lost the coverage provided by its legal and extraordinary extensions. Law 12/2023 has reinforced, among other things, ordinary extensions and introduced an extraordinary one-year extension at the end of the contract when social and economic vulnerability situations are proven and the landlord is a large housing holder (first final provision of Law 12/2023, which modifies the LAU). While these extensions are in force and must be applied, the landlord cannot force the tenant to leave through eviction based solely on the expiration of the term.

Minimum procedural requirements

Eviction execution always requires a judicial procedure regulated by the Civil Procedure Law. Broadly, this implies:

• Eviction claim before the competent court, based on a legal cause for termination and accompanied by documentation proving the contract and breach.
• A judicial ruling (final judgment or decree in specific eviction procedures) declaring the contract terminated and ordering the eviction.
• Only with this judicial title can the eviction order be carried out, i.e., the effective removal with the assistance of the court bailiff.

Additionally, for large holders, the admissibility requirements for the claim introduced by Law 12/2023 apply. According to the Constitutional Court Judgment 190/2025, of December 16, this law establishes specific admissibility requirements for eviction claims filed by those who hold the status of large housing holders and obligations of communication of proceedings concerning primary residences (BOE-A-2026-1756). This means that, in these cases, the court can only process the claim if these additional requirements linked to the protection of the primary residence are met.

Vulnerability, social services, and suspension of eviction

Recent reforms have focused on protecting vulnerable people:

• Royal Decree-Law 37/2020 and Royal Decree-Law 11/2020 introduced a period of suspension of eviction procedures and orders when they affect vulnerable tenants without housing alternatives, along with extraordinary contract extensions and support measures (BOE-A-2020-16824 and BOE-A-2020-4208).
• Royal Decree-Law 8/2021 extended the suspension of eviction procedures and orders in vulnerable situations and the extraordinary contract extension, in the cases and with the procedures already established, also reinforcing the possibility of moratoriums and partial rent waivers when the landlord was a large holder (BOE-A-2021-7351).
• Law 12/2023, in its fifth final provision, modifies the LEC and strengthens the role of social services in eviction procedures: it removes the need for the interested party's consent to transfer the necessary information to the competent administrations to verify vulnerability, expands the scope of protection, and establishes a system in which the court decides on the suspension of the eviction order after weighing the specific case, setting suspension periods of two months for individuals and four months for legal entities, longer than before.
• The same provision introduces a conciliation or mediation procedure when the claimant is a large holder, the dwelling is the occupant's primary residence, and the occupant is in economic vulnerability, aiming to facilitate housing solutions through coordinated public administration action.

Summary of the current situation

Consequently, to carry out an eviction of a long-term tenant in a primary residence today, it is not enough to have a cause for termination under the LAU. The following must also be met:

• The legal and, if applicable, extraordinary extensions linked to vulnerability and the status of large holder.
• The admissibility requirements when the claimant is a large holder and it concerns a primary residence.
• The communication to social services and the possibility that the court orders, after their report, the temporary suspension of the eviction order due to vulnerability, within the extended periods set by Law 12/2023.
• Respect for any possible suspensions or special extensions that, at any given time, keep some of the exceptional mechanisms born from Royal Decree-Laws 11/2020, 37/2020, 8/2021, 11/2022, 20/2022, and 21/2021 alive.

In practice, any current eviction of long-term tenants in primary residences requires simultaneously verifying the general regulation of the LAU and the LEC, the landlord's status as a large holder or not, the possible vulnerability of the tenant, as well as the specific validity of special protection measures and coordination with social services that have been linked since 2020.

The Tenants' Union (and, in Madrid, Tenants' and Renters' Union) is a grassroots social organization that brings together people who rent to collectively defend their rights against landlords, real estate agencies, and large holders. It is not a traditional labor union — it does not intervene in worker-employer conflicts — but a tenants' union focused on the housing market.

Legal nature and internal organization

The Union was founded in Madrid in May 2017, in a context of sharp rent increases after the real estate crisis, and almost simultaneously with an equivalent organization in Barcelona. It operates as a stable civil society organization, mainly funded through membership fees and occasional donations, without relying on public subsidies according to its own transparency portal.

Its structure is participatory and assembly-based:

• Annual assembly of members as the highest decision-making body.
• Periodic plenaries (e.g., bimonthly) to set work lines.
• Coordination group and commissions (union action, organization, communication, etc.).
• Territorial or landlord-based sections, which organize specific conflicts in blocks, neighborhoods, or against a large holder.

It also has a resistance fund, to which it allocates part of its income to cover fines, legal costs, and other expenses related to collective action. It maintains several spokespersons and a collegiate leadership, avoiding the figure of a single “leader” like traditional union leaderships.

Main competencies and functions

Although it has no public legal competencies (it is neither an administration nor a professional association), it performs a set of key functions in defending tenants:

• Individual and collective advice: it assists tenants facing rent increases, non-renewals, evictions, charges they consider improper, abusive clauses, or changes of ownership.
• Organization by buildings and neighborhoods: it promotes neighborhood assemblies to collectively negotiate rental conditions, resist evictions, or stop speculative operations in specific blocks.
• Negotiation with landlords and funds: it has intervened, for example, in conflicts with large holders like Blackstone, where it claims to have achieved dozens of renewed contracts without the initially planned rent increases.
• Judicial and administrative action: it files complaints and claims before authorities. Its complaints helped open investigations and sanctions by Consumer Protection against real estate agencies like Alquiler Seguro for abusive practices with tenants.
• Social mobilization: it calls demonstrations, protests, and civil disobedience campaigns (such as rent strikes) to pressure for regulatory changes and stop specific evictions.
• Political and legislative advocacy: it drafts proposals to reform the Urban Leases Law and housing legislation, which are then submitted by sympathetic parliamentary groups.

Areas of action and confederal network

The Madrid reference is part of a Confederation of Tenants' Unions that coordinates organizations in over a dozen territories (Catalonia, Madrid, Valencia, Andalusia, Balearic Islands, Galicia, Asturias, Cádiz, etc.). This network:

• Shares nationwide campaigns (for example, a “spring of mobilizations” or rent strikes).
• Promotes international meetings with other European housing unions.
• Acts as an interlocutor with the central Government and parliamentary groups in housing debates.

Role in defending tenants' rights

Its role materializes both in specific cases and structural changes:

• Emblematic eviction cases: the support to Maricarmen, an 87-year-old neighbor evicted in Madrid, has led to massive demonstrations and the proposal of a “Maricarmen decree” with measures to stop evictions, freeze rents, and limit temporary and room-by-room contracts.
• Legal reforms: tenants' unions promoted a bill to extend the protection of the Housing Law and the LAU to seasonal and room rentals, closing loopholes allegedly used to evade price caps and other guarantees.
• Control of corporate abuses: their complaints to Consumer Protection contributed to opening sanctioning proceedings and imposing multimillion-euro fines on large real estate companies for charging illegal commissions, including abusive clauses, or imposing unsolicited services.
• Coordination with labor unions: it has called on CCOO and UGT to join housing mobilizations, and recently supported the promotion of a general strike where labor and rental demands are addressed jointly.
• Continuous political pressure: after the fall or blockage of housing royal decree-laws and contract extensions, the Union maintains mobilization and civil disobedience campaigns (“We stay,” rent strikes) so that the political cost of the blockage falls on parties that, in its view, turn their backs on tenants.

Overall, the Tenants' Union acts as a collective intermediary between renting households, public authorities, and the real estate market, turning individual problems — increases, non-renewals, evictions — into public conflicts and regulatory proposals, and providing tenants with advisory, organizational, and pressure tools that they could hardly exercise individually.

In the current legislature, the central Government has deployed a very dense package of measures on rentals and evictions, relying both on the Law on the Right to Housing and on several urgent royal decree-laws. Broadly, it has acted on three fronts: rent limits and contract extensions, strengthening the “social shield” against evictions, and development of Law 12/2023 through tensioned zones and new fiscal and financial instruments.

1. Law on the Right to Housing (Law 12/2023)

Although it predates the start of the current legislature, Law 12/2023, of May 24, on the right to housing is the pillar on which many recent measures have been built:

• Caps on rent increases in tensioned zones: in these areas, new contracts must reference the price of the previous contract to avoid disproportionate increases, and may be subject to limits through the state system of reference indices.
• State index to update rents: the law obliges the INE to create a specific index that acts as a ceiling for annual revisions, progressively replacing the use of the CPI to avoid sharp increases.
• Tensioned residential market zones: allow freezing rental prices and require administrations to approve plans to increase affordable supply. As of July 2026, the Ministry of Housing estimated about 9.3 million people already protected by the law in municipalities declared as tensioned zones.

2. Suspension of evictions and “social shield”

Regarding evictions, the legislature has extended and expanded the so-called social shield:

• Royal Decree-Law 1/2024, of May 14: extends the suspension of eviction orders on the primary residence of certain vulnerable mortgage debtors, modifying Law 1/2013. Protection against eviction is extended four more years, until May 15, 2028, preventing eviction in mortgage executions of households in special vulnerability.
• Royal Decree-Law 1/2025, of January 28 (urgent measures in economic, transport, Social Security, and vulnerability matters): its Title IV:
  • Extends until December 31, 2025 the suspension of certain eviction procedures and orders for economically vulnerable people without housing alternatives, by modifying RDL 11/2020 and RDL 37/2020.
  • Maintains and adjusts the system of compensation to owners and landlords for rents not received during the eviction suspension, also relying on Royal Decree 401/2021.
• Royal Decree-Law 26/2026 (Council of Ministers of 09/29/2026, published 09/30/2026):
  • Reinforced suspension of evictions until December 31, 2030 in procedures promoted by entities that buy homes or portfolios of unpaid mortgages below market value (so-called “vulture funds” and similar) when the occupant proves vulnerability and lack of housing alternatives.
  • Obliges autonomous communities, in certain eviction cases for non-payment, to enervate the action (pay the necessary amounts to avoid eviction) if they do not offer housing alternatives, during a period in which the procedure is suspended.

3. Rent limits and extraordinary contract extensions

In the specific rental field, the legislature has approved several instruments that act both on prices and contract stability:

• Limits on rent updates: the chaining of extraordinary caps on the annual rent revision is maintained, initially linked to the Competitiveness Guarantee Index and later, already in this legislature, to the new INE index. The goal is that, until 2027, increases generally do not exceed 2% annually even outside tensioned zones, containing the impact of inflation.
• Royal Decree-Law 8/2026, of March 20 (urgent rental measures):
  • Recognizes the right to an extraordinary extension of up to two years (three in tensioned zones, according to the deployment of Law 12/2023) for rental contracts of primary residences that expire between 03/22/2026 and 12/31/2027, maintaining the same conditions.
  • Links this extension to a 2% cap on rent updates, so the contract is extended without increases above that limit.
• RDL 26/2026 also introduces:
  • An extraordinary extension of up to two years for certain contracts ending before 12/31/2028, linked to vulnerability conditions and the declaration of tensioned zones.
  • The reform of the Urban Leases Law to regulate temporary rentals and room rentals, setting maximum duration for temporary contracts and rent limits for rooms relative to the rent of the entire dwelling.

4. Financial and fiscal support measures

Alongside strict price and eviction regulation, the Government has articulated incentives and economic supports:

• RDL 1/2025 creates a state-backed guarantee line to cover rent defaults of young people and vulnerable families, managed by autonomous communities and later developed by regulation. It aims to reduce risk for landlords and favor contracts for groups with more access difficulties.
• RDL 26/2026 incorporates a new state deduction in the IRPF for tenants with low incomes for renting their primary residence, and improves deductions for landlords who lower prices below reference limits, potentially reaching a very broad exemption of rental income in certain cases.
• It also introduces adjustments in the VAT on protected housing (super-reduced rate of 4% for permanent protected housing) and strengthened treatment of the public housing company CASA 47 to expand the public affordable rental stock.

Overall, the legislature has combined a structural framework (Law 12/2023 and tensioned zones) with royal decree-laws that maintain rent caps, extraordinary contract extensions, and a shield against evictions of vulnerable households, while articulating compensation mechanisms for landlords and public guarantees to facilitate renting.