Britain’s Army of Landlords Is Generation Rent’s Biggest Problem

In Spain, tenants’ protests forced a snap election. Here, renters face similar issues – low wages and a lack of social housing – but with one in 20 adults a landlord, politicians don’t have to act.

Madrid, Sept. 23, 2026: The eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, 87, from the flat she had lived in for more than 70 years, became a symbol of Spain’s real estate crisis. Photo by Luciano Lima/Getty Images

When the 87-year-old Spanish pensioner Maricarmen Abascal was dragged from her home on a stretcher last month, at the behest of a property investment company that wanted to increase her rent by more than 500%, Nadz Vogel had two thoughts running through their head.

The first was a sense of déjà vu. Less than a fortnight earlier, Vogel – a campaigner with the London Renters Union, which fights for tenants’ rights – had been present at a similar eviction in the British capital, in which a 71-year-old was violently removed from their home. The second was a mixture of excitement and wistfulness. Excitement because Abascal’s treatment lit a fire under Madrid’s long-running housing protests, bringing hundreds of thousands on to the streets and plunging the Spanish government into political crisis. And wistfulness because Britain’s own grassroots housing movement – despite notable successes in recent years – is yet to mobilise anything like those numbers.