3 ‘Abascals and’ 851 ‘Maricarmens’
Abascal is a lineage of toponymic origin based in the Basque Country. The first Abascal that boomers like me remember is José Manuel, a Spanish middle-distance runner who, despite not having the final burst of speed that other athletes of his time like Sebastian Coe, Said Aouita, and José Luis González could have, managed an agonizing bronze medal in the 1,500-meter race at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, the same ones as Carl Lewis, Michael Jordan, and Juan Antonio San Epifanio, Epi.
boomers like myself is José Manuel, a Spanish middle-distance runner who, despite not having the final burst of speed that other athletes of his time like Sebastian Coe, Said Aouita, and José Luis González could have, managed an agonizing bronze medal in the 1,500-meter race at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, the same ones as Carl Lewis, Michael Jordan, and Juan Antonio San Epifanio, Epi.
Decades later, another Abascal entered our lives. With a strange caliph-like beard, a resemblance to that of Julio Anguita, and a macho posture, with chafed armpits and crotch, Santiago Abascal is today the leader of the official far-right of the neighboring country. Abascal, Santi, his friends call him, must celebrate the feast of Saint James the Moor-slayer, patron saint of Spain. He is the leader of the 'poor fascists' (fatxapobres), a whole gaggle of people with little flag bracelets, who rent, who earn a miserable salary, and who, even so, want to slim down the public system, privatize services, and withdraw aid and compensation for those who need it most.
But there is a third Abascal, whose life story has caused a real political and social earthquake in the Spanish state. This is María del Carmen Abascal Martín, known today familiarly as Maricarmen and who already has the honor of having given her name to a decree, the Maricarmen decree. This eighty-seven-year-old lady from Madrid has been evicted from the apartment where she has lived all her life, more than seventy years, and having always paid the rent that was due, which lately was 500 euros. Maricarmen had the misfortune that one of these so-called vulture funds bought the apartment where she lived. The bigwigs of the vulture fund were not satisfied until they had thrown her out, basically because charging “only” 500 euros for an apartment rent in Madrid is like making a bad deal.
The Maricarmen case has set off a bomb of solidarity, of demonstrations, protests, and street encampments, but it has also activated the Sanchista social democracy, which has stood up straight like a dart to go out and rescue all the Maricarmens of the Iberian Peninsula, stretched out in the sun of apathy and capital. In the Balearic Islands alone, 851 evictions were carried out in 2025. 851 Maricarmens sharing apartments and rooms, 851 Maricarmens sleeping in their cars or on a park bench. 851 silences. 851 indifferences. No decree, no law, no measure that is not, in our case, to encourage construction, the consumption of territory and, ultimately, to continue feeding the monster of the leeches that swell with the blood of the island's tenants.
Meanwhile, the parties of the alleged political center-right come out in defense of the poor little multi-property owners. What miserable and helpless people these are who have two, and three, and four, and five properties. They are small-minded people. Year-round rents at a thousand euros each month, apartments with four rooms rented at 500 euros per room, seasonal rentals at a couple of thousand euros a month each summer, vacation rentals... But watch out for touching them, they are one of our own. Poor things, they won't be able to pay for their children's degrees in Barcelona, or Madrid, or Massachusetts, it's all the same.
The conceptual mother of capitalism is private property. We live surrounded by people who live with the sole ambition of accumulating. They haven't finished buying the second apartment before they are already looking at how they can buy the third. What they hadn't told us is that the powerful and the nouveau riche would squeeze the poor in the most delicate part: housing. That is why, never before has the left dared to propose such a radical questioning of the free market. It is becoming increasingly clear, and in Mallorca we know it well, that this way of living is totally unsustainable for the vast majority of the population. It is becoming increasingly clear that a radical regulation of the market is needed, which proves totally incapable of self-managing and guaranteeing the constitutional right to decent housing.
Meanwhile, things are happening. Just a month ago, the neo-Nazi formation Alternative for Germany Saxony-Anhalt. It was the first time the far-right had the possibility of governing a land German state. Three weeks later Die Linke (The Left, it's that simple) caused a surprise and prevailed in the local elections in Berlin. Elif Eralp, a Munich-based jurist from a Turkish family, won with a frontal position against the far-right and a narrative focused, precisely, on the problems of accessing housing in the Teutonic capital.
Mallorca can't take any more. Enough of the opportunistic and greedy people who, with all the nerve in the world, still present themselves as victims of the system. The positions of the parties that defend them by appealing to the needs of the “poor Mallorcan owners” cross the barrier of the most blatant cynicism, against which the traditional left has no tools to fight, because, among other things, it counts among its voters many of these “small owners”. Fresh air is needed. New parties and new people and profiles are needed among those who choose to lead. Is Mallorcan society prepared to vote for an Elif Eralp and turn the island's power mechanisms upside down? Could Palma choose a Zohran Mamdani as the first Muslim mayor of the city and at the same time prioritize initiatives aimed at the people who need them most?