Church warns against ‘polarised’ housing debate in Spain ahead of snap election

Some commentators accused the Spanish Church of ‘complicity’ in the housing crisis, alleging that bishops were failing to speak out because dioceses profit from property speculation.

The Archbishop of Pamplona urged Spaniards to establish a “pact” to overcome the “huge polarisation” dividing Spain on the issue of housing, after the death of an 87-year-old woman evicted from her Madrid apartment triggered snap general elections.

Maricarmen Abascal died in hospital last week after her forcible removal on a stretcher from the flat she had occupied for 71 years. Young people in central Madrid held a minute’s silence for Maricarmen, known by her first name throughout Spain, before marching to the Spanish parliament in protest at the housing crisis.

Archbishop Florencio Roselló of Pamplona said: “I understand the protests as long as they are peaceful and I regret the death of Maricarmen, but there will not be a solution while there are ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’. According to who you speak to, the renters are the baddies or the goodies, and the owners are the baddies or those affected [by the issue].”

Abascal was evicted by authorities because she could no longer pay the rent, fixed by her father in 1956 at the equivalent of €500 a month, after it was increased by the investment fund who now own her Madrid flat to more than €2,600 per month.

Roselló said housing is “a right, not only to a habitation but also for the creation of a household and a family. We need a policy on land assigned for housing, to eliminate bureaucracy and for private property – which is not a crime – to be subject to regulations so that everyone may access this.”

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced general elections on 29 November, after opposition parties blocked emergency housing legislation proposed by his Socialist party, which holds a minority in the Spanish Congress.

Some commentators accused the Spanish Church of “silence” on the issue. In an online editorial titled “We are all MariCarmen”, the group Redes Cristianas (Christian Networks) observed: “What is striking is not only [the Church’s] silence on the structural sin of evictions, but also, at times, its complicity.

“During Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Madrid, the Union of Renters managed to get a letter to him stating that property speculation had also reached Church bodies. They asked him for an audience to talk about the sale of its buildings to ‘vulture’ [investment] funds and the consequent expulsion of neighbours from their homes.”

The Archbishop of Valladolid Luis Argüello, president of the Spanish bishops’ conference, wrote a social media post at the end of September titled “three types of eviction”, referring to evictions linked to housing, the crisis in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta which thousands of Moroccans illegally entered in July, and abortion, which he called eviction from the maternal womb.

“There is a certain agreement, more emotional than moral about ‘the Maricarmen case’ which has become a rallying cry, and the legal disagreement, ideological and social conflict surrounding the causes and possible solutions to this serious issue. It is a serious matter to consider within the ‘new social contract’ which workers and businessmen spoke to Pope Leo about when they met him,” said Archbishop Argüello.

The conference spokesman Bishop Francisco César García Magán of Toledo sent a message to the family of Maricarmen, expressing the bishops’ “heartfelt” condolences after her death. “We entrust her eternal rest to the Lord, as befits us as pastors,” he said.

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