On Wednesday September 23, 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal was evicted from the Madrid flat where she had lived for more than 70 years. The vulture fund that owned the property had raised her monthly rent from €500 to €2,650. Removed on a stretcher and taken to hospital, Maricarmen became the focus of widespread anger over Spain’s housing crisis - where rents have increased 87 percent over the last decade.

Thousands protested in Madrid that evening, with demonstrations spreading elsewhere in Spain, followed by a far larger march last Saturday of up to 300,000 people. In the immediate aftermath of that march a massive protest camp was step up in Madrid's iconic Puerta del Sol square - in a move that echoed the Indignados occupations 15 years earlier. For five nights in a row now, thousands of people have packed Sol demanding an end to speculation and soaring rental prices.

Today on Sobremesa Podcast, we talk to Hannah Fakir, an activist with the Sindicato de Inquilinas Madrid’s tenants union - who organized the non-violent resistance to Maricarmen’s eviction and are behind the protest camp. I talked to her in Sol as protestors chanted in the background. As always if you like what we are producing and want to keep the podcast sustainable, please consider donating to our buy me a coffee page.

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In the first episode of our new series on the Spanish Transition, Alan McGuire speaks to historian Alejandro Quiroga, Senior Lecturer of History at Complutense University of Madrid, about the political economy of Spain’s passage from dictatorship to democracy.

How did a movement for democratic change that started on the streets become a process negotiated between political parties and political elites?

We also dispel the myth that it was a peaceful transition. We discuss far-right terrorism, political violence and the possibility that the military could intervene and halt the progress towards democracy.

Finally, we discuss one of the most important and controversial moments of the Transition: the legalization of the Communist Party in 1977, and what its legalisation tells us about the compromises and powers that shaped the emerging democratic system.

If you enjoy The Sobremesa Podcast, you can help keep the podcast going through our Buy Me a Coffee fund. Donations help us improve the sound, and pay for the programs to run the podcast.

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As the ongoing fallout from the Ceuta border surge continues to dominate Spanish headlines, we examine the government's management of crisis and how it dropped the ball after its initial success in containing the influx.

As always if you like what we are producing please consider leaving us a donation at our Buy Me a Coffee Page.

https://buymeacoffee.com/thesobremey