Maricarmen, victim of a perverse system

Maricarmen's eviction, a woman of 87 years with a 50 % disability and reduced mobility, exposes the brutality of a system that places the real estate business above the right to housing. PSOE, PP, Governments and Justice pass the responsibility while vulture funds advance on the neighborhoods and repression falls on those who try to prevent evictions.

By Santi Gonzalez

Inhuman and shameful thirst for profit

Around noon 23 September saw the eviction of Maricarmen, with police repression involved. Maricarmen is an old woman from 87 years that, Besides, has a degree of 50 % granted disability and reduced mobility, something that further increases their situation of vulnerability. This did not prevent the Urba Gestión vulture fund—called an “investment fund” by those who benefit from these unscrupulous practices—from kicking Maricarmen out of the home in which she lived for 71 years, always paying your rent. Protected by the legal framework and with the police provided by the Central Government Delegation, They managed to evict the protesters from the Tenants Union who were trying to prevent the eviction of a vulnerable person from taking place to make way for real estate speculation..

PSOE and PP pass the ball, but they are responsible

Maricarmen fought against eviction since 2020, when the vulture fund bought the apartment where he lived. Since then, It seems inconceivable that the central government of Pedro Sánchez (PSOE), the regional government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP) and the municipal of José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP) They couldn't do anything to avoid this social catastrophe.

The Government of Pedro Sánchez fills its mouth talking about how everything is to blame for the PP, because he is the one who governs in the Community of Madrid and who, Besides, stopped the moratorium against evictions presented by the Government in Congress. But are they really telling us that after eight years of government they could not protect the neighbors and prevent the neighborhoods from becoming cannon fodder for real estate speculation??

A clear example is the abstention they carried out a few days ago in response to the proposal of their government partner., summer, to prohibit the purchase of real estate by commercial companies. They show that they fill their mouths talking about protecting the citizen, but in reality they respond to the interests of savage capitalism. further, They were supposed to present a Royal Decree that could prevent evictions, but at the moment it is conspicuous by its absence. It seems that the only thing the Government is interested in is taking advantage of the crisis in a proselytizing way..

On the side of the Ayuso and Almeida Government, all you have to do is see their speculative policy. Together with Vox, they were responsible for stopping the anti-eviction moratorium that came from the pandemic and they are simply not interested in stopping real estate speculation..

Housing is a right, not a business

It's your model: houses for those who can pay for them and nothing more. Ayuso seems to be laughing in our faces by buying a penthouse with public funds for six million euros to use as an “office”, while people like Maricarmen stay on the street. Justice goes hand in hand with the intentional inaction of political power, which evidently serves to guarantee the negotiations and not to protect the ordinary citizen.

A quadrilateral of speculation and complicity

The complicity of bourgeois parties with real estate interests, protected by the laws of the institutional regime and the capitalist system, is once again exposed in its most terrifying version. to get started, they could have denied the eviction, declaring that Maricarmen's rental had to continue as it was, as old life annuity, claiming that it was not the second subrogation of the rent, but the first. This due to the inability of his mother, in the Franco era, to appear in the first contract. Both, They were in charge of commanding the police operation that was brutally repressed to carry out the eviction.: a National Police sent by the central Government. Everyone cooperates so that the vultures win. We are not in the presence of an isolated case. Evictions with repression are common throughout the Spanish State. They don't care that old women are left on the street, children or entire poor families.

Mobilization is the answer

The same afternoon of the eviction, Tenant unions from across the State called to rally against this injustice., filling streets and squares of capitals and cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Oviedo, Valencia or Seville, among other. The concentration that began in Ayuso's attic reached more than 10.000 people, becoming a tide that the police sent by the Government Delegation once again repressed.

Nevertheless, this doesn't end here. Working people have long been showing their frustration with the housing situation.. We call to continue in the streets and to deepen coordination throughout the territory. The union centers should stop being complicit through inaction and call for mobilization. We need a state fight plan that has housing as its axes, education and health, along with other sectors that have been hit hard and are also mobilizing, like the teachers from Valencia and Barcelona.

It's not just the political color, It is the system

Maricarmen's case is the tip of the iceberg of a capitalist system that needs to foster another speculative bubble and relies on the capitalist parties that guarantee the rules of the game., although some make some quarrel for the cameras. Today, vulture funds and banks have taken over 15 % of the national real estate park, raising neighborhood prices, generating stressed areas and providing the conditions to continue growing. Only the Blackstone company has in its possession 20.000 housing.

And then the Government is surprised to receive the negative response from Urba Gestión when they wanted to buy the apartment. When what they should do is generate mechanisms so that the decision of whether a woman of 87 years with disabilities stays on the street does not depend on the will of a business group.

Radical measures are needed, immediate and background

Not only should they prohibit evictions, limit rental prices and offer social rentals. They would also have to execute popular housing plans with easy social access., not in dribs and drabs, but according to the needs of the great majority. And expropriate without compensation the large holders of speculative housing, putting it at the service of social housing for the most needy. As with education, health, transport and so many other items, Capitalism makes housing a lucrative business and not an inalienable right. Because, The struggle and organization must be the focus of the anti-capitalist struggle to resolve the underlying problems once and for all., with a socialist perspective.