Maricarmen Abascal dies after the eviction that forced a Spanish election

Maricarmen Abascal died on Wednesday. The Madrid tenants' union announced the death. She was 87. She had been in hospital for severe anxiety and exhaustion since 23 September, the day police and social workers removed her on a stretcher from the Madrid flat she had lived in for more than 70 years. No cause of death has been announced. She did not go home, even after the public fight with the landlord that her case produced.

The flat is in the Retiro district. The eviction followed a rent rise she could not pay. Reuters reported four earlier eviction attempts over the past decade. On 23 September the removal was carried out with her on a stretcher, which is the image that travelled. Activists camped in Puerta del Sol. On Wednesday, after the death was announced, thousands walked from that square toward parliament. Marchers chanted that the death was a murder. A 36-year-old marcher, Dario Gomez, called it a completely avoidable death that stood for the housing crisis. Protests were also held in Barcelona. A further march, from Puerta del Sol to her home, was planned for Thursday evening.

Trade unions on Wednesday called a nationwide general strike over housing for 11 November. That date sits 18 days before the election Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has set for 29 November. He called the vote after parliament rejected decrees meant to curb evictions and limit rent pressure. The rejection, and the street protests that followed the eviction, are the two facts he has tied to the decision to go early.

Reuters reported that Sanchez is trying to move the campaign off other problems: the handling of a migrant crisis in Ceuta, the North African enclave, and corruption cases involving the Socialist Party and his family. Housing is the ground he wants. Rents and a shortage of homes are the conditions the tenants' union and the marchers have put at the centre of Abascal's case. A strike on 11 November gives the unions a dated action inside the campaign, not only a funeral.

On Thursday the political use of her name was already explicit. In the Madrid regional assembly, Manuela Bergerot of Mas Madrid said Abascal had died because of people who put gain above a life. She accused regional leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso of having laughed at Abascal. The line she pointed to was Ayuso's remark on 28 September: a question about the age at which she herself could stop paying landlords. Left parties blamed the conservatives who voted down the housing decrees. Parties on the right said the central government had failed to deal with the crisis after eight years in office.

The sequence is short enough to list. A rent rise. An eviction on a stretcher on 23 September. A hospital admission for anxiety and exhaustion. A camp in Puerta del Sol. A parliamentary rejection of eviction and rent decrees. A snap election called for 29 November. A death on Wednesday. A strike called for 11 November. A cause of death not stated.

What the public record does not yet support is a medical finding. Anxiety and exhaustion are the reasons given for the admission, not a certified cause of death. The chant on Wednesday treated the eviction as the cause. Politicians on Thursday treated the death as an argument about who blocked a law and who has held office. The dated facts underneath both uses are the stretcher, the hospital, the rejected decrees, and an election five weeks and a day after the unions' strike.