Spain: 83-year-old Paquita faces eviction after 28 years in her Madrid home

Paquita, 83 years old and 28 in the same home: the eviction that still has no date

There is one fact that unsettles anyone who looks at this case with even minimal attention: Paquita has lived since the late 1990s in the same flat in Santa Ana, a few metres from Madrid's Plaza Mayor. She religiously pays a rent of around €1,150 a month. And yet the landlord wants her out. The eviction scheduled for 22 July was provisionally suspended by the court, which asked the authorities for reports on the octogenarian's vulnerability and the housing alternatives available. The decision gave her a reprieve. It settled nothing.

Who is Paquita and why her case ended up in court

Paquita arrived in Madrid from Huelva when she was 15. She is now 83, has Parkinson's disease and a level III dependency rating. Her reduced mobility makes any move a first-order problem. The flat is not just a roof: it is where her mother and her husband died, and where she has built a network of neighbours that, for a woman with her level of dependency, works as basic infrastructure. The property belongs to Tolesanta S.L., a company linked to a real estate portfolio that manages buildings in central Madrid. Paquita's family maintains that behind the proceedings lies the intention of turning the flat into tourist accommodation. "They want to turn my home into a tourist flat. All they want is money, money and money," she said over the summer. The company has not publicly confirmed this.

The building, the neighbourhood and the business straining the city centre

Santa Ana 6 is a few metres from the Plaza Mayor. It is part of a group of properties distributed among different companies after the reorganisation of the Couret family's assets. According to Daniel Piedrabuena, president of the La Chispera residents' association, several live residential contracts remain in the building, but the trend in the neighbourhood points elsewhere: "They are not interested in residential rental contracts, they just want to do business, and tourist rentals or renting to students bring them more money." The name Tolesanta already appeared in another dispute: the Madrid Provincial Court upheld the closure of several tourist apartments run by companies of the same group at 77 Calle Toledo, where around forty of the sixty flats at one point were used for tourist purposes.

What Spain's housing decrees change, and what they don't

The approval of the housing decrees provides for the suspension of an eviction when the person is vulnerable and has no housing alternative. That buys time, but it does not resolve the underlying issue. Paquita still does not know when she will have to leave her home. During the first eviction attempt she put it bluntly: "How are you supposed to find a house between day one and day 22 when I can barely get around and my son has no choice but to work?" It is not known whether her case falls within the situations those decrees protect. Those around her say she is well but tired, and that she has stopped giving interviews to the media after receiving calls from more than a hundred newspapers, radio stations and programmes. Unless she changes her mind, she will only take part in a short video.

The repeating pattern: Mari Carmen, Paquita and the narrative of the vulnerable tenant

The case has peine an uncomfortable debate. Some argue that high-profile eviction cases tend to be concentrated in Madrid and built around specific profiles, and that this distorts the real scale of the problem. Others point in the opposite direction: that rents are massively inflated and that the ultimate responsibility lies with politicians who fail to build public housing. And a third, harsher current questions whether someone who could have bought a home but chose not to deserves public protection now. These are three frames that will not be reconciled. Meanwhile, Paquita is still living in Santa Ana. And still waiting.