Maricarmen, 87, dies in hospital weeks after bailiffs removed her from a Retiro flat

Maria del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old Madrid tenant known as Maricarmen, has died. The Madrid Tenants' Union announced the death on Wednesday. She had been in hospital since bailiffs removed her from her flat on 23 September.

She had lived in the flat for more than 70 years. It sits in Retiro, one of the expensive districts inside the M-30. The private investment company that owns the building raised her rent from 500 euros to 2,650 euros. At the exchange rate used in wire reports of the eviction, that is a rise from about 560 dollars to about 2,970 dollars. She could not pay it from a pension.

On 23 September hundreds of people came to the door to stop the eviction. She was taken out on a stretcher. The image of an 87-year-old leaving on a stretcher, after seven decades in the same rooms, is what made the case a national argument rather than one more tenancy file. CNN and the tenants' union both dated the removal to that day.

The landlord later agreed she could return when she left hospital. The union said on Wednesday that the agreement came too late. She never went back. The announcement was short. "We regret to announce that Maricarmen has passed away today. As you all know, she was evicted on September 23, and has remained in hospital ever since."

The rent multiple is the number that explains the politics. A rise from 500 to 2,650 euros is more than five times the old rent. Spanish tenancy law has been rewritten more than once since the financial crisis, with rent caps in stressed areas and arguments over whether those caps reach a flat owned by an investment firm in Retiro. Maricarmen's flat was not saved by any of those texts in time for her to stay. The company enforced the new figure. The city removed her.

The union's phrase "historic agreement" refers to the later offer of return. A right to go home after discharge does not help a patient who does not leave hospital. The gap between 23 September and Wednesday is the period in which the legal fight and the medical outcome diverged. The eviction was paused in practical terms by the offer. The death closed it.

Housing protests in Madrid and other Spanish cities have used her name since the stretcher left the building. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's government has faced those protests through the autumn. The death ends the case the protests were already using: a named tenant, a named day, a named rent.

Retiro is the park district, close to the Prado and to the streets where investment purchases have been thickest. A 70-year tenancy in that district is the holding an owner reprices when a building changes hands. The old rent of 500 euros was the trace of the long stay. The new rent of 2,650 euros was the market the owner wanted. The difference was 2,150 euros a month, more than many pensions.

No cause of death was given in the union's note. She was 87, she had been carried out, and she had not left hospital. The union did not ask the public to infer a medical finding. It asked the public to connect the date of the eviction with the date of the death, and it said the offer of return had missed her.

The flat is empty of her either way. The agreement to let her back in has no tenant to perform it. What remains is the rent figure, the stretcher, and a union statement that the remedy arrived after the person it was written for had already gone.