00:03Welcome to the Cube, Euronews' fact-checking show.
00:06Spain is seeing mass protest after an 87-year-old woman named Maricarmen Abascal
00:11was evicted from her longtime home in Madrid.
00:13And a wave of conflicting claims about the nature of the demonstrations has spread online.
00:18Maricarmen had lived in the same flat since 1956.
00:21She paid reduced rent under an old rent-protected contract
00:24originally signed by her father and later inherited by her mother.
00:27The legal dispute is whether that second transfer of the rent-protected tenancy
00:31could continue indefinitely.
00:33Spain's Supreme Court ultimately ruled that it could not.
00:36Under the applicable rules, the second transfer lasted only two years
00:39unless the tenant had a recognized disability above 65%.
00:43Maricarmen's recognized disability was 50%.
00:47She was evicted on the 23rd of September
00:49after several previous attempts to remove her had been postponed.
00:53So contrary to what many online posts claim, the eviction was not illegal.
00:56It was authorized by the courts after a years-long legal dispute.
01:00The controversy is instead about whether the law is actually fair.
01:04Maricarmen's previous rent was about 500 euros a month.
01:07But after the protected contract ended,
01:09the owner had proposed a new rent of up to 1,650 euros,
01:13well above Maricarmen's 1,350 euro pension.
01:16It's also misleading to assume demonstrators are solely protesting against Maricarmen's eviction.
01:21It has indeed become a symbol of Spain's housing crisis,
01:24particularly rising rents and insecurity for tenants.
01:27But what protesters are actually calling for are measures including stronger eviction protections,
01:32rent freezes or controls,
01:33automatic renewal of some rental contracts and restrictions on large property investors.
01:38Demonstrations continued even after an agreement was reached for Maricarmen to return home,
01:42because organizers say that demands are about housing policy generally,
01:46not just her case.
01:47Spain's national government has already proposed new housing measures following the protests,
01:52including extending protections against some evictions and changing rental rules.
