Evicted Spanish octogenarian Maricarmen Abascal, heart of Spain's housing protests, has died

Maricarmen ​Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose ​eviction sparked housing ‌protests in Spain, ​has died, Madrid's tenants' union said on Wednesday.

Abascal's eviction sparked a ‌series of protests across Spain in the past couple of weeks, including activists camping on one of Madrid's main squares, and ‌calls for tackling a mounting housing crisis. Those protests, along with ‌parliament's rejection last week of decrees aimed at curbing evictions and limiting rent pressures, prompted Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to call an early election ⁠for ​November 29.

Sanchez ⁠is seeking to shift the political narrative from his government's handling of ⁠a migrant crisis in Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta and ​a series of corruption cases involving his Socialist Party and ⁠his family to the housing crisis, an area in which he ⁠can ​harness growing resentment about rising rents. Angel Victor Torres, Spain's territorial policy minister, lamented the news, saying Maricarmen had become ⁠a symbol of what was happening to many families, elderly and ⁠young ⁠people struggling to obtain their own homes or stay in them.