An 87-year-old woman carried out on a stretcher from the house she had lived in for seventy years. Hundreds of people in front of the door. Then the tents returned to fill the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, fifteen years after the Indignados. This was the spark that accelerated a decision that the Spanish government had been postponing for months. On September 29, the Council of Ministers led by Pedro Sánchez approved two housing decrees. The first extends eviction protection for economically vulnerable people without a housing alternative until 2030 and allows tenants to extend existing rental agreements that expire by December 31, 2028, for up to two years.
The package also includes new rules on temporary and single room rentals and restrictions on home purchases by so-called “vulture funds”. A second decree instead contains the controversial automatic renewal of rental contracts.
A measure born with Covid that has never disappeared
To understand how we got here, we need to go back to March 2020. During the pandemic, the Sánchez government introduced the possibility of suspending evictions of vulnerable families left without housing alternatives. That measure, initially conceived as an emergency, was then extended several times.
At the beginning of 2026 the shield had been extended until 31 December 2026. The decree also established special protection for small owners: those who own one or two homes were not subjected to the same regime as owners with at least three properties, while it was up to social services to find an emergency housing solution for the vulnerable tenant.
The reason indicated by the government itself was now very different from the health emergency: rising house prices and rents, lack of affordable housing and a very high share of family income absorbed by rent. In March the government had already approved a decree which allowed tenants, upon request, to maintain contracts expiring by the end of 2027 for another two years, substantially maintaining the conditions and rent. The measure was also motivated by the economic consequences of the war in Iran and provided for a 2% limit on annual annuity updates in certain cases.
Then came the Maricarmen case
What happened on September 23 in Madrid changed the political climate. Maricarmen Abascal, 87 years old, was evicted from the house in the Retiro neighborhood where she had lived since 1956. The contract was an old “renta antigua” rental. After a long dispute with the property, the judicial commission carried out the eviction and the woman, with mobility problems, left the building on a stretcher and was transferred by ambulance to the Gregorio Marañón hospital.
The case quickly became a national symbol. The Defensor del Pueblo spoke of the need to intervene in the gaps that allow situations of this type. Sumar increased pressure on the PSOE to pass the housing decree immediately.
The following Saturday a demonstration for housing ended at the Puerta del Sol, where some of the participants decided to stay. In a few days the protest turned into a camp, with tents in the same square that in 2011 had been the center of the Indignados movement. One of the requests was the approval of what the tenants’ movements have dubbed the “Maricarmen decree”.
The compromise was therefore to divide the package into two separate decrees, which could have different majorities in Parliament. Junts, decisive in the Chamber, asked that the State not pass on the cost of social protection for defaulting tenants to small owners: according to the Catalan formation, when the tenant is vulnerable it should be the public administration that covers the missed payments and guarantees another accommodation. On the other hand, Sumar, together with other forces of the left, pushed for the regulation of temporary rents and rooms, for the extension of contracts and above all for their automatic renewal, in order to make it more difficult for the owner to terminate the relationship upon expiration without a cause provided by law.
The government has called for an extraordinary plenum of Congress on Friday, in an attempt to immediately validate them.