Protests over housing flare in Spain after relief measures rejected

Tens of thousands of protesters marched in Madrid and other cities in Spain on Saturday to demand affordable housing, a day after lawmakers rejected relief measures for tenants.

The demonstrations extended a crisis that has gone on for more than a week, triggered by the eviction last month of a pensioner, 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal, from her Madrid flat.

The defeat was another political setback for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and has renewed questions over whether his minority government can survive until the next scheduled general election in 2027.

His government's proposed measures, which included automatic renewal of tenancy contracts and restrictions on evicting vulnerable tenants, were voted down by opposition parties on Friday in Spain's parliament.

The defeat infuriated those protesting the country's increasingly expensive housing market.

Hundreds of protesters have been occupying a tent city set up a week ago in the heart of Madrid to press for reforms.

On Saturday, demonstrators marched through the capital's streets. Authorities said 70,000 people participated, but the organisers put the figure at 500,000.

Smaller demonstrations took place in other cities, including Palma de Mallorca, Santander, Segovia and Toledo. In Valencia, five people were arrested after clashes with police, local media reported.

At the Madrid protest Marcos Sainz, a librarian of 26, said used to rent a two-bedroom apartment with friends for a total monthly rent of 900 euros ($1,000). Today, a one-bedroom flat today often costs 1,000 euros -- or half the median monthly salary in the capital, he told AFP.

He would protest rental spikes "until someone dares to regulate it all as (otherwise) we'll all have to leave Madrid and that would be a shame as I am from Madrid".

"We are demanding a fundamental right," said Javier, a 31-year-old solar panel installer. "Decent housing, stability and conditions allowing us to construct a decent life project.

"I spend half of my salary on a tiny room," he added.

"What we are feeling in the streets is a new energy that we haven't seen in a long time -- an energy that is showing that eight days of people's power can achieve more than eight years of progressive government," Valeria Racu, one of the spokespeople of the Tenants' Union organising the protest, said in a statement.

"Now begins real politics -- politics which has always belonged to the people and which will return once and for all to the streets," she added.

She repeated her union's call for a general strike.

Housing has for years been a top concern for Spaniards as supply falls short of demand, with rents and house prices rising as elsewhere in the European Union.

Average rents in Spain have almost doubled over the past decade, while asking prices for homes have risen by about 90 percent, according to real estate website Idealista.

Abascal's eviction catalysed long-running anger about runaway housing costs.

The pensioner was forced to leave the Madrid flat where she had lived for more than seven decades after it was acquired by an investment company that sought to increase her rent by 275 percent, say housing campaigners.

The backlash led the property's new owners to reach a deal allowing her to return to the flat at a low rent.

The housing bills Sanchez's leftist coalition had presented to parliament were rejected after the Catalan separatist party Junts -- on whose support the government relies -- voted against them, arguing they lacked rigour.

Junts joined the main opposition Popular Party (PP) and the far-right Vox party in shooting down the measures.

PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo on Saturday urged Sanchez to call early elections "because the country can't take any more".

Recent opinion polls have generally placed the Popular Party ahead of the Socialists.