Vulture funds win and the grandmother was expendable! The shame of the Maricarmen case

Mari Carmen Abascal was 87 years old when she was evicted from her home in Madrid on September 23. She died on October 7 at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital.

Mari Carmen had spent just over seven decades in her home. The sequence of events is documented across all media outlets, websites and social media. Establishing that the eviction caused her death would require medical evidence that will be very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. Nevertheless, the lack of medical evidence does not diminish the gravity of what happened: a vulnerable elderly woman was driven from her home. 

Behind the word “market” there was an elderly woman and a family rental contract. According to various sources, the company that owned the building where Mari Carmen lived considered her lease expired and demanded a new contract under which the rent would rise from 500 to 2,650 euros a month. That is equivalent to multiplying it by 5.3, an increase of 430%. 

The eviction was carried out after four attempts. There were protests and, later, an agreement that would have allowed her to return. Mari Carmen died before she could go back.

Her story raises a difficult question for any society: what effective protection does a vulnerable person have when they lose the place where they have built their life? 

The protests brought housing to the center of the political debate. There have been encampments, urgent government measures and parliamentary rejection of decrees related to this crisis. It is worth examining that chronology without turning every political decision into a single explanation for a personal tragedy. Institutions have no shortage of speed when it comes to disputing responsibility before the media. Nevertheless, the discussions and decisions should have taken place before a person left her home on a stretcher only to die after two weeks in a hospital.

For a family, a home is rest, roots and security. For a landlord, it may represent income and obligations. Property carries rights and responsibilities; old age deserves effective protection. From a progressive perspective, leaving a vulnerable person without an alternative is a public failure. A contract should not serve as an excuse for indifference.

It is necessary to expand public housing, assist those facing eviction, and evaluate rules against abuse and speculation. Measures must work and avoid worsening scarcity. But passively waiting for the market to resolve every emergency is a policy: the policy of leaving alone those who have the least power.

For us, in Venezuela, geographic distance does not make this story foreign. Aging, insufficient incomes and fragile family networks can turn a housing crisis into a human emergency. Planning for old age matters, but demanding institutions capable of caring for those who were unable to save matters just as much.

Mari Carmen deserves to be remembered for her dignity and her struggle. Her case forces us to ask who detected her vulnerability, what real alternatives existed, and why the response came so late. A society can have buildings of ever-increasing value and leave its elderly ever more unprotected. If a society protects the appreciation of a property better than a vulnerable elderly woman, it has a moral and political problem. Mari Carmen forces us to look at it head-on.