The eviction of Maricarmen Abascal ignited the flame of a mobilization that ended up reaching the Council of Ministers. The Tenants' Union named a proposal of five measures after her, the parties situated to the left of the PSOE adopted a good part of them, and the Government ended up approving this Tuesday two royal decree-laws that include some of the main demands.
The result, however, is not exactly the "Maricarmen decree" that was initially demanded after the eviction. The Government has incorporated the regulation of temporary rentals and room rentals, new extensions for contracts, and measures against the evictions of vulnerable people.
The automatic renewal that the Union demanded has ended up in the second decree. In contrast, it has not adopted the general freeze on rents as proposed and has opted for a limitation on updates.
The comparison allows us to reconstruct how much remains of a proposal that was born in the street and ended up conditioning a negotiation that PSOE and Sumar had been trying to close for months.
Five demands before reaching Moncloa
The so-called "Maricarmen decree" was not initially a text from the Government. It was the name chosen by the Tenants' Union for a proposal presented on September 25, two days after the eviction, with the declared aim of ensuring that there would be "not one more Maricarmen".
The organization concentrated its demands on five points: structural measures against evictions; regulation of temporary rentals and room rentals; effective extensions of contracts; freeze on rents and update to 0%; and automatic renewal of contracts when they reached their expiration. The latter was presented by the Union as the main transformation to bring the Spanish market closer to a more stable rental model.
The pressure quickly transcended to the organization that had drafted the proposal. Izquierda Unida, Movimiento Sumar, Más Madrid, Comuns, Podemos, ERC, EH Bildu, and BNG appeared on Monday in front of the Gregorio Marañón Hospital, where Maricarmen was hospitalized, to demand a more ambitious decree from the Executive. Among the shared demands were the end of evictions, contract extensions, regulation of temporary rentals and room rentals, and automatic renewal.
Evictions: the Government accepts the principle, but sets conditions
One of the demands that finds direct reflection in the first decree is to strengthen the protection of vulnerable people against evictions without housing alternatives.
The Royal Decree-law 26/2026, published this Wednesday in the BOE and which comes into force this Thursday, establishes until December 31, 2030 the suspension of certain procedures when the claimant is an entity dedicated to acquiring properties or mortgage portfolios under the conditions defined by the regulation and the affected person is in a situation of vulnerability and lacks a housing alternative. The protection extends even to procedures where there is already a resolution for eviction as long as it has not yet been executed.
The Government's response therefore coincides with the objective of increasing protection against evictions, although it does not establish an absolute and unconditional prohibition of all evictions without housing alternatives. The application depends on the assumptions and requirements developed by the regulation.
Season and rooms: one of the demands that does reach the BOE
The regulation of temporary rental and room rentals is probably one of the points where there is a clearer correspondence between the original proposal and the approved decree.
The Union demanded modifying the Urban Leasing Law to prevent these modalities from being used to evade the guarantees of regular rental. The Government's text incorporates both types of leasing into the regulation and establishes that a temporary contract lacking a real and proven cause will be considered a regular housing rental.
Room rentals are also limited. The sum of the rents collected for all the rooms of a property cannot exceed the rent that would correspond to the rental of the entire property, with additional limits in areas declared as having a tense residential market.
In this section, the Government not only incorporates one of the demands that had been taken on by the left parliamentary front, but also introduces detailed regulation on a modality that the Executive itself considers used in some cases to circumvent the rules of residential rental.
Extensions: up to two years while the structural change arrives
The first decree also includes another of the claims raised during the days following the eviction: to prevent a large number of contracts that are now reaching their expiration from forcing tenants to leave the housing or sign a new lease under different conditions.
The contracts for habitual housing whose mandatory period, tacit extension or tacit reconduction ends in the cases provided for by the regulation may, at the tenant's request, be subject to annual extensions for a maximum of two additional years. The tenant must be up to date with payments and have complied monthly during the previous eight months.
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During that period, the conditions of the contract will be maintained. The owner will be obliged to accept the request except in certain cases, including that there is a new agreement between the parties or that they need to recover the housing for themselves or certain relatives in a real and accredited manner.
The measure functions as a temporary solution. The most far-reaching transformation regarding the duration of leases has been shifted to the second decree, which addresses automatic renewal once the ordinary periods of the contract have expired.
Automatic renewal arrives, but in another decree
Automatic renewal was the measure that the Tenants' Union considered most important in its proposal. Its approach sought to prevent an owner from ending a rental relationship simply because the contract had concluded, even though the tenant had fulfilled their obligations.
The Government has included the principle in a second royal decree-law separate from the package published this Wednesday. The approved design contemplates automatic renewals for successive periods of five years when the owner is a natural person and seven when it is a legal entity, with conditions for the landlord to terminate the contractual relationship.
The separation also has political consequences. The two decrees must independently pass the validation of Congress, so that the measures contained in one could be maintained even if the other does not achieve the necessary support.
The freeze on rents does not arrive in the requested terms
The main distance between the proposal of the Union and the result of the Council of Ministers appears in the prices.
The organization expressly claimed to freeze the rents of existing contracts and establish an update of 0%. The proposal took as a reference measures adopted outside of Spain and aimed to prevent the rent from increasing while the contract remained in force.
The Government has not assumed a general freeze on those terms. The decree establishes an extraordinary limitation on the annual update of rents and combines that intervention with tax incentives for owners who maintain or reduce prices.
The tax system particularly rewards reductions. The reduction on the net rental income can reach 100% when the rent of a new contract is reduced by more than 5% and the conditions set by the regulation are met, while the tax benefit decreases progressively when the owner increases the price.
The philosophy chosen by the Executive thus combines limits and tax incentives, as opposed to the general freeze initially demanded by the tenants' movement.
From the "Maricarmen decree" to two government decrees
The developments of recent days also explain why there is no exact correspondence between the original proposal and the approved regulations. The Union presented its five demands when PSOE and Sumar were already negotiating a housing package, and over the weekend, the pressure shifted to the political arena.
The parties to the left of PSOE staged a joint position at the doors of Gregorio Marañón. Sumar had already agreed with PSOE on some measures, but maintained open disagreements on issues such as room regulation or the extension of contracts.
The Council of Ministers ended up approving two texts instead of one. The first, Royal Decree-Law 26/2026, spans 96 pages and includes measures on evictions, temporary rentals and by rooms, extensions, taxation, affordable housing, and limitations on certain real estate operations, among other issues. It comes into effect on October 1.
The second focuses on the most far-reaching reform regarding the continuity of rental contracts. The division allows Congress to vote separately on both packages and turns the vote scheduled for Friday into the next chapter of a negotiation that did not conclude in the Council of Ministers.
The distance between both texts also works in the opposite direction. The Government's decrees contain numerous measures that were never part of the five points of the original "Maricarmen decree".
The first text creates, among other actions, the Tu Casa line, with public loans of up to 50,000 euros at 0% to facilitate access to a first home; modifies the taxation of owners and socimis; enables new municipal surcharges on certain properties; temporarily limits certain acquisitions of housing by entities dedicated to real estate investment and creates a Social Impact Housing Fund.
The result is, therefore, a much broader package than the proposal that took the name of Maricarmen, but also different in some of its central elements.
The two decrees will have to pass Congress this Friday. Only then will it be known how much of the political momentum arising from Maricarmen's eviction ends up being consolidated in the legislation.