An 87-year-old disabled woman named Maricarmen Abascal was carried out of her Madrid apartment on a stretcher last Wednesday. Her landlord wanted €1,650 a month. Within days, tent camps filled Puerta del Sol, the government scrambled, and two emergency decrees landed on cabinet's desk. The sequence tells you everything about how Spain's housing politics actually works: crisis-driven, reactive, and structurally unable to address supply. The first decree extends eviction protections for vulnerable tenants to 2030, regulates temporary and room-by-room lettings, bans so-called vulture funds from buying property until 2028, and extends expiring rental agreements by two years. It reportedly has backing from the conservative Catalan and Basque parties needed to pass Congress. The second decree, covering automatic lease renewal, almost certainly does not. Health Minister Mónica García called the package "unthinkable even a month ago." That framing — emergency as opportunity — is honest about the government's weakness. The tactical split into two decrees is itself the tell. The Tenants' Union immediately called it out: "a tactic of tearing something into shreds so that all that's left are scraps." The union wants its full "Maricarmen decree" — a comprehensive package including rent freezes and automatic lease renewal without abusive hikes. By dividing the measures, the government gets to pass the politically safer half while letting the harder provisions die in Congress, then blame Junts or the People's Party for the failure. Junts' objection is substantive and politically significant: Spain's rental market is dominated by small landlords, not corporate funds. "Owning two properties isn't the same as owning entire buildings," said spokesperson Míriam Nogueras. The vulture-fund ban makes good rhetoric but most Spanish rental stock is held by individuals and families. Regulations that treat a pensioner renting out a second flat the same as a hedge fund buying entire blocks will generate political backlash without solving the supply problem. People's Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo's dismissal — "a problem created over eight years can't be solved in five minutes" — is cynical but contains a kernel of truth. Spain's housing crisis is a supply crisis layered with a speculation crisis. Eviction bans, rent controls, and fund-purchase restrictions are demand-side interventions that do nothing to build apartments. Without a massive expansion of social and affordable housing construction, every protective measure simply redistributes the pain among existing participants in a shrinking market. The Abascal case itself resolved with market logic, not legislation: Urbagestión offered her the apartment back at €533 a month, capped at 30% of her income, down from €1,650. That's a 68% rent reduction achieved through public pressure, not law. The question is what happens to the thousands of tenants who don't become national symbols. Ada Colau — former Barcelona mayor, longtime housing activist — recently had to move in with a relative because she couldn't afford rent on a single income after her separation. If the most prominent housing activist in Spain can't afford to rent alone, the market is broken at a level that emergency decrees cannot reach. The 30-day congressional clock starts at publication. The coalition needs Junts, which wants small-landlord carve-outs. The protesters at Puerta del Sol want comprehensive reform. The government is trying to satisfy both with a package designed to partially satisfy each and fully satisfy neither. Spain's housing problem will outlast this political cycle because the fundamental input — new affordable units — is not addressed by any measure in either decree.
