María del Carmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman who became a symbol of Spain's housing crisis, has died. Madrid's tenants' union announced the news on Wednesday, two weeks after Abascal was evicted from the Madrid apartment where she had lived for more than seven decades.
Abascal was evicted on September 23 on a stretcher, having withstood four previous eviction attempts over the past decade. She was later hospitalized with exhaustion, where she sent a final message to protesters urging them to fight.
Her eviction sparked a wave of nationwide protests and demonstrations across Spain to tackle a mounting housing crisis, including activists camping in one of Madrid's main squares.
These massive protests spiraled into a political crisis that eventually led Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to call a snap election. In the wake of her death, unions are now calling for a nationwide general strike on November 11.