Ignacio Lázaro: 'Maricarmen paid €154 rent while we paid €750'

The heir to the building on Sainz de Baranda breaks his silence: 'She called us fascists and never showed any gratitude'

The story of Maricarmen Abascal, the long-term rent-controlled tenant evicted after decades from a Madrid apartment, has become a megaphone for debates about housing and property. Yet the dominant narrative, centered on her as the 'heroine of evictions', omits the property-owning family's perspective. Ignacio Lázaro, grandson of the building's original buyer in the 1950s, offers a radically different account, calling Abascal a 'problematic person' and complaining that after decades of hard work his family ended up demonized.

A family fortune built on hard work

'My grandfather bought the house in the 1950s. He was born in Brea de Aragón, came to Madrid with a suitcase, started working and ended up setting up a shoe shop and later a clothing business. My four aunts, four of the six siblings, worked their whole lives in the clothing factory. With that money, earned from scratch, the family was able to buy the building,' Lázaro recounts. He himself grew up in the property, living in an apartment while his father had his law office there. After marrying, he moved to another apartment in the same building, right across from Maricarmen Abascal's.

Living side by side: complaints and a paltry rent

Life alongside her, according to Lázaro, was far from idyllic. 'She was an extremely annoying person. She complained constantly: about the heating, the elevator, the noise… I had three small children and there were complaints because the children made noise. She was unpleasant to deal with, very particular and always complaining,' he says. The situation was made worse by the rent Abascal paid: in February 2010, the total bill was €436.06, but by 2016 it showed rent of €154.38, including charges such as the doorman, water and heating. He, by contrast, paid €758 for his own apartment, rented from his family.

The cost of 'empathy' and the forced sale

In 2007, although the old rent-controlled lease could legally have been terminated, Lázaro's aunts decided to keep Maricarmen's rent, when she was about 60. 'There's a lot of talk about owners who want to throw people out of their homes, but in our case the opposite was done. A situation was maintained out of empathy. Now we appear in the story as fascist bastards,' Lázaro laments. Repairs and building costs fell on the family, and that, on top of everything, led them to sell the building in 2018 to Renta Corporación. After the sale, Lázaro was forced to pay €1,200 in rent for a house in Rivas-Vaciamadrid, while his brother and sister also had to move and pay rent.

The 'poor evicted old lady' versus 'the milkmaid'

Lázaro is indignant about the public image built around the case. 'The image that has been given is that of a poor evicted old lady and, from my personal experience, it doesn't fit the person I knew. She was a problematic person, who complained constantly and never showed any gratitude.' He recalls that in the neighborhood she was known as 'la Lechera', after the dairy her mother ran. 'When we sold the house we said we had got rid of la Lechera. But now, when I see that an agreement has been reached with the city council, I think: how well this has worked out for this lady. First we subsidized her for years and now it seems we are going to keep supporting her through our taxes,' he concludes.

The story, Lázaro stresses, shows that 'behind the property there is a family that saved and worked. That asset was sold legally. Now we appear in the story as fascists.' A narrative that, according to the heir, has been buried under the demonization of property owners and the simplistic view of Maricarmen as a universal victim.