Mari Carmen: The story behind this trend in Social Media today
08-10-2026
I’ll look up what’s circulating today around “Mari Carmen” so I can explain the trend without accounts or links.The name is trending around an eviction case in Madrid. I’m checking the sequence of events so the summary stays accurate.The name trending today is Maricarmen, or María del Carmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman in Madrid whose eviction and death have become a flashpoint in Spain’s housing debate.She had lived in the same flat on Calle Alcalde Sainz de Baranda, in the Retiro district, since 1956, when she was 17. The tenancy was an old regulated contract signed by her father. After her parents died, it passed to her. The building later changed hands and, in 2018, ended up with a property company, Urbagestión. The company argued that the second succession of the lease was not valid and that the contract had lapsed. Courts disagreed at first; in March 2026 the Supreme Court sided with the owners.The firm then sought a market rent reported at about 2,500 euros a month, several times what she had been paying and more than her pension. She also had a recognized disability. Eviction dates were set and postponed several times. A United Nations committee on economic and social rights asked Spain to stop the eviction and guarantee her housing. On 23 September 2026, at the fourth attempt, court officers and police carried it out. Supporters who tried to block the entrance, the stairs, and the flat were removed. She left on a stretcher. City authorities said they had offered alternative housing, which she declined; she went to stay with relatives.She was admitted to Hospital Gregorio Marañón and remained there. On 7 October 2026 the Madrid tenants’ union said she had died, roughly two weeks after the eviction, and linked her death to the stress of the process. That news sent the name back to the top of social media. Posts mixed tributes, footage of the eviction and the protests that followed it, and arguments over who was responsible: the courts, the landlord, national housing law, or the Madrid regional and city governments. Demonstrators had already chanted “We are all Maricarmen” and camped in Puerta del Sol; after the death, some moved toward Congress.The story spread because it condensed a longer fight over old rents, successive ownership, and the shortage of affordable housing into one person who had lived in the same home for about seventy years and did not survive the loss of it.