There are moments when a society seems to realise, almost suddenly, that what it had been putting up with for years was not natural. That the hardships faced by millions of people have causes, those responsible and, above all, alternatives. These moments are difficult to identify whilst they are happening, often lost amidst the noise of current affairs, fleeting outrage or yet another protest. But every now and then, something snaps. And what until then had seemed natural begins to feel intolerable.
Perhaps we are going through one of those moments in Spain right now.
From individual injustice to collective struggle
The story of Maricarmen Abascal encapsulates many of the contradictions of our time. An 87-year-old woman, evicted on 23 September from her home of seven decades, a home that had become a business opportunity. She died shortly afterwards, on 7 October. A whole lifetime of work and memories subordinated to the profit expectations of a property investment company. What is truly disturbing about her story is that it could have been just another eviction. Another personal tragedy lost among those of thousands of people evicted every year.
But Abascal decided to fight back, joining forces with the Sindicato de Inquilinas e Inquilinos de Madrid (Madrid Tenants’ Union). She attended one of their meetings, turned her problem into a shared struggle and, alongside her fellow campaigners, began to defend something that went beyond her own home: the right of every person to build a decent and stable home, regardless of whether they are owners or tenants.
There is something profoundly political about this decision. Abascal could have faced her situation alone, seeking an individual solution to a problem that seemed to be hers alone. Instead, she decided to organise. And it was precisely that decision which elevated her conflict to a dimension no one could have imagined. An elderly woman standing up to a property development company became the icon of a trade union struggle capable of putting an investment fund on the ropes, bringing down a government and prompting a general strike, backed by every trade union in the country, to be held on 11 November.
Within 12 days of her eviction, social unrest forced prime minister Pedro Sánchez to call an early election for 29 November after Congress rejected his government's emergency measures, named after Abascal, to tackle housing unaffordability. The real estate company that owned her building also signed an agreement that would have allowed her to return home.
Her death has provoked a sadness and anger that are difficult to describe. But it also forces us to ask what has happened to make her story shake an entire country in this way. The answer cannot be found solely in outrage at injustice. There have been years of tenants organising, collective disputes, training and the building of a social force capable of transforming that outrage into a political conflict of extraordinary proportions.
The Madrid Tenants’ Union has demonstrated over recent weeks something we had forgotten for far too long: that grassroots organisations can exercise power, set conditions and wrest gains from those who seemed untouchable. The agreement reached with Abascal’s landlord, the legislative measures promoted in her name and the mobilisation of millions of people are all expressions of the same reality. When there is organisation, the balance of power shifts.
When survival is no longer enough
For decades we have internalised a particularly cruel form of resignation. We have become accustomed to the fact that working does not guarantee making ends meet, that becoming independent is a privilege, and that our aspirations must always conform to the needs of the market. We have learnt to accept as individual problems the consequences of economic and political decisions that were never within our control.
Housing is probably the most obvious manifestation of this process. We have ended up accepting that an exorbitant proportion of our wages goes towards paying rent to property owners, while our chances of building a life for ourselves dwindle. And we have done so on the promise that, with enough effort, one day we would manage to escape this situation. A promise that, for millions of people, is no longer credible.
However, something is changing in the way we interpret this reality. The discontent sweeping through our cities is beginning to find collective explanations. It is becoming increasingly difficult to convince those who work, study or care for others that their precarious situation is solely down to their personal choices. And when a society begins to recognise that what is happening to it has shared causes, it also begins to understand that it can tackle them collectively.
This is one of the great achievements of the housing union movement: transforming the way thousands of people understand their problems and, above all, how they can resolve them. Union assemblies have become spaces where individual powerlessness finds collective answers. Where people who arrive convinced that nothing can be done discover others facing similar situations and realise that, together, they can begin to change the rules of the game.
Organising as the path to a better future
It is important, however, to avoid an overly triumphalist feeling. Indignation does not guarantee lasting change. History is full of outbursts that seemed to herald profound transformations but ultimately fizzled out without altering the structures that caused them. The strength of the current moment will depend on our ability to turn this mobilisation into stable organisation, new trade unions, greater membership and a social force capable of sustaining struggles long after they have disappeared from the headlines.
That is why what is at stake goes far beyond housing. The difficulty in paying rent, the deterioration of public services, job insecurity and the inability to find time to live one's life are all part of the same struggle. The struggle against a society in which the needs that sustain our existence are increasingly subordinated to the private accumulation of wealth.
And it is precisely at this point that we must broaden our aspirations. Because we have spent too long discussing how to make a situation bearable that should strike us as unacceptable. Perhaps the time has come to return to a much simpler and, at the same time, profoundly radical question. Why should we settle for merely surviving when the resources needed to live better exist?
The answer has political implications. It means understanding that rights are historical achievements, that no substantial improvement in the living conditions of the majority was a gift from those who held power, and that every advance required organisation, conflict and a collective will to transform the status quo.
The general strike for housing and against the high cost of living must open up precisely this horizon: the possibility that conflicts over wages, housing, care and public services are recognised as part of the same struggle, because they are consequences of the same system. It is essential that the union movement once again takes centre stage in the debate over how wealth is distributed and who decides how we live. Because challenging how much we pay just to live is also challenging how much of our lives we are forced to give up so that others can continue to accumulate wealth.
Abascal is no longer with us. And no political victory will ever make up for that loss. But she left us something to be cherished. Her decision to attend a union meeting reminds us that great changes often begin with seemingly small gestures. That organising is a way of regaining control over our lives, and that even those who seem most vulnerable can become the driving forces behind extraordinary transformations. That the union is family, as our comrade said so many times.
Something has changed in Spain. Perhaps we cannot yet gauge its full significance, but one of the great certainties upon which our collective resignation was built is beginning to crumble: the idea that life consists, fundamentally, of mere survival. That we should be grateful to have a job, even if it barely covers the cost of housing. That aspiring to anything more than simply making ends meet is asking too much.
And when a society begins to break away from that idea, the horizon of what it considers possible also shifts. It begins to understand that a better life is a right worth fighting for. That we can aspire to more time, better wages, decent housing and an existence less clouded by fear of tomorrow.
But there is an even more important lesson to be learnt. This shift in consciousness has found a way to organise itself. Abascal found in the Madrid Tenants’ Union the means to defend her home and, alongside thousands of others, sparked a much broader debate on the right to live with dignity.
That is the strength of trade unionism, and the political opportunity before us. We can live better; we have the right to do so, and the only sure way to secure that future is by building the collective power needed to make it happen. Organise, fight and win.