The housing decrees that the government had proposed to address the social discontent caused by the eviction of a woman named María del Carmen Abascal Martín have fallen through. Days of negotiations, of conveniently defended interests, of arguments piling up on both sides, have ended in early elections. And in the maelstrom, the perspective is lost. Accessing a house, a safe place in the world to shelter oneself from indignity, is a human and constitutional right, not a gift.
The eviction as a legal mechanism of Civil Law has existed, exists, and will exist, but it has a very bitter face. At the height of the financial crisis, the Clinical Psychology department of the Complutense University, along with the Platform of Those Affected by Mortgages, led a support group for evicted individuals, explaining how being expelled from one's home represents a dramatic break in identity and personal security. Deprived of their refuge, they feel that society abandons them. The etymology of the word leads to the ultimate consequence: the loss of hope. Evicting comes from the obsolete verb "ahuciar," which means to give hope or confidence.
The closest thing to today's evictions was seen for the first time in 17th century England with the rise of the bourgeoisie. Common lands were privatised, and thousands of peasants expelled from their homes and plots fled to the cities to survive by any means necessary. In the 19th century, the historic centres saturated with population were transformed by the evictions of the most vulnerable. The small but significant difference with the current moment is social protection. The UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has prohibited evictions without legal guarantees and without respect for human dignity since 1976.
Sergio Nasarre Aznar, a professor of Civil Law at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, explains in The Conversation that evictions occur in all European countries, and points to household over-indebtedness due to housing as an indicator to assess the risk of evictions. In 2025, the European average was 9.6% compared to 8.2% in Spain. In Denmark, it was three times that, and in Norway, double. On the other hand, according to data from the General Council of the Judiciary, evictions in Spain between 2015 and 2025 have decreased by more than 60%. In 2015, there were 67,000, and in all of 2025, just over 24,500.