Yesterday, Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman who was evicted from the home she had lived in all her life, died. Her case has sparked a new, more radical wave of the housing movement. We say loud and clear: Maricarmen was murdered by the system!
[Originally published in Spanish at comunistasrevolucionarios.org]
Two weeks ago, images of her being carried out of her house on an ambulance stretcher shocked the whole country and sparked widespread outrage against this injustice. In the end, her frail health could not withstand the immense pain and suffering of being brutally evicted from her home.
Maricarmen’s eviction represents all of the 25,000 plus people evicted every year: the elderly, families, young people, and workers who cannot afford the exorbitant rents demanded by large landlords and vulture funds. They think only of making as much money as possible, by treating housing as a luxury commodity.
It is important to keep the culprits firmly in our sights. The national police who stormed into Maricarmen’s home with their helmets, body armour, shields, and batons to evict a vulnerable elderly woman did so under the orders of the judge who ordered her eviction. As we see on a daily basis, judges are not impartial, but rather loyal agents of the capitalist system.
When their masters from vulture funds such as Urbagestión say ‘clear this house’, they carry out their orders without a second thought as to the consequences. This was a class-based murder: Maricarmen has been sacrificed on the altar of capitalism.
To the vultures and their lackeys in the political and judicial systems and in the police stations, her life was worth nothing. Equally guilty are the bourgeois and social-democratic politicians, who have unquestioningly facilitated the business dealings and activities of these vulture funds and large property owners.
We, the Organización Comunista Revolucionaria (OCR), denounce all these class murderers and the capitalist system. It is the source of barbarism – not only of evictions, but of endless wars, the destruction of the environment, and constant cuts to social services, such as education, pensions, and healthcare.
We will not let Maricarmen’s death be in vain. A few days after her eviction, in a video recorded from her hospital bed, she encouraged us not to give up, and to continue the struggle. Her spirit of determination inspired us all. Her eviction was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the incident that highlighted the need to step up the fight for housing and against all the system’s other injustices.
Millions of workers, young and elderly people, and families live in precarious conditions under threat of eviction, paying rents that account for almost half their wages. Some young people are unable to leave home until they are 30 or older; some pensioners cannot make ends meet on their pensions, under the threat of the People's Party (PP) cutting and privatising them if it comes to power.
Armed with this spirit, hundreds of thousands of workers and young people have taken to the streets in mass demonstrations across the country, setting up camps in the central squares of towns and cities nationwide.
The OCR is actively participating in this struggle and putting forward its programme. First, we must prepare for and support the general strike called by the trade unions on 11 November. But beyond this, to ensure decent housing for all, we need to put an end to the capitalist system that treats housing as a commodity and throws people out onto the streets as if we were rubbish.
We must expropriate the vulture funds and large property owners and place housing in the hands of the working class, so that we can manage our living spaces democratically and ensure that no one else dies at the hands of the capitalists as a result of being evicted.
Long live Maricarmen!
