Over the past few days, the eviction of 87-year-old Spanish woman Maricarmen, who was carried out on a stretcher from the old house she had lived in for over 70 years, has ignited local society.

Later, after the Madrid municipal housing agency intervened to coordinate, the landlord Urbagestión reached a new agreement with the elderly woman: a new 8-year lease was signed, with rent not exceeding 30% of her net income, allowing her to return to her original home after being discharged from the hospital.

Yet, thousands of miles away on the Chinese internet, a group of people are reacting with frantic grief and jumping up and down cursing:

“This is bandit logic! Violating private property rights!”

“Who will dare to buy a house to rent out in the future? The government is just robbing people!”

“The leftist government is indulging lazy people to freeload again!”

They were absolutely filled with righteous indignation.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think the Spanish government was going to drive armored vehicles tomorrow to confiscate the dozens of luxury mansions in their names.

But here is the most black-humored part:

Many of those who are so deeply heartbroken over the policy don’t even own a single house themselves.

Some are even recent immigrants who struggle to rent a place, facing rent hikes, lease renewals, and agency fees every day; in reality, they are clearly on the more vulnerable side of the housing market.

But their first reaction is not:

“If one day I lose my job, get sick, grow old, or temporarily fall out of the social safety net, would this kind of system also leave me a little buffer?”

Instead, they instantly become defenders of capital, sighing in despair:

“Alas, it’s so hard for landlords.”

“How can the rate of return on capital be guaranteed?”

“Who will dare to invest in the future?”

While they are still scrambling for cheap rental housing in reality, mentally they have seamlessly aligned themselves with the “evil landlords.”

Their property count is zero, but their class substitution is achieved in one step.

What’s even more outrageous is that many people haven’t even carefully read what the current Spanish law actually stipulates.

Spain’s current law is not:

“As long as the tenant says they are poor, the landlord can never kick them out.”

Exactly the opposite.

If a tenant owes rent, the landlord can legally terminate the lease; if the lease legally expires and the tenant refuses to move out, the landlord can equally file for desahucio (eviction) and ask the court to repossess the property.

Moreover, this right has nothing to do with whether the landlord has one, two, or dozens of houses.

A landlord with one house can sue, a landlord with ten houses can sue, and a real estate company can sue just the same.

Article 27 of Spain’s Urban Leases Act explicitly lists unpaid rent as a legal ground for lease termination; Article 250 of the Civil Procedure Law also clearly stipulates that whether due to unpaid rent or the expiration of the contract term, the property owner can recover possession through eviction proceedings.

So what exactly does the so-called “protection of vulnerable tenants” protect?

It’s not as scary as the internet makes it out to be.

According to the still-valid Article 441 of the Civil Procedure Law, if the court confirms that the tenant belongs to an economically or socially vulnerable group, the proceedings can be temporarily suspended to allow social services to intervene.

But this suspension is not indefinite:

If the landlord is a natural person, the maximum is 2 months.

If the landlord is a legal entity such as a company, the maximum is 4 months.

Once the time limit is reached, the law clearly states:

The suspension is automatically lifted, and judicial proceedings continue.

Furthermore, when the judge makes a decision, they must also simultaneously consider whether the landlord themselves belongs to a vulnerable group.

You can of course argue:

“Even two months is too long.”

“Four months shouldn’t have to be waited out either.”

This is completely open to discussion.

But to describe it as:

“The leftist government has given the houses to the tenants.”

“Tenants will squat and can never be evicted in the future.”

“Private property rights no longer exist.”

That is no longer a difference of opinion.

That is being too lazy to even read what the law says.

Moreover, there is a particularly important fact about Maricarmen’s case:

She is not an okupa.

She did not pry open someone’s door to move in.

She is not a “freeloading tenant” who owes years of rent and stubbornly refuses to pay.

She lived here legally for over 70 years, under an old lease that began in 1956. She had been paying rent all along, and the real dispute that later arose was about the inheritance, continuation, and termination of the old lease. The Supreme Court ultimately supported the landlord’s legal interpretation regarding the termination of the lease, which is why the court executed the eviction according to law.

Therefore, the controversy of the whole matter has never been:

“An old lady squatted in someone else’s house for 70 years.”

But rather:

What should society do when a landlord, who has the legal right to repossess a house, is faced with an 87-year-old person who has lived there almost her entire life and has no realistic alternative housing options?

The court finally ruled for eviction.

The law was executed.

There is nothing unacknowledgeable about this.

But when Spanish society sees an 87-year-old person being carried out on a stretcher from the home she lived in for over 70 years, it is equally understandable that it generates sympathy, protest, and anger.

The fact that the law rules in favor of the landlord doesn’t mean society must also rule away its compassion.

Let’s look again at the new landlord this time, Urbagestión.

The story some people imagined in their heads is:

“A hardworking young couple saved money their whole lives to buy a house, only to have an old lady squatting and refusing to move.”

The melodrama is practically fit for a prime-time soap opera.

But reality doesn’t seem that simple.

Urbagestión itself is an enterprise engaged in real estate investment, asset management, and development.

An investigation by Spanish media showed that it had over a dozen residential buildings for sale at the time, including an entire property building near Gran Vía in Madrid with an asking price of 12.5 million euros; the platform is also handling the transactions of nearly 300 pharmacies across more than 20 cities in Spain.

Its two main principals are also involved in over a dozen companies, with businesses spanning real estate and other sectors.

The apartment Maricarmen lived in was bought by Urbagestión in 2018 for about 240,000 euros.

When they bought it, they knew a long-term elderly tenant was living inside.

According to El País, the current market value of this property is now about 3 to 4 times its original purchase price.

Arbitrage is, of course, a commercial instinct.

Buying low and selling high is not wrong.

Making money by investing in real estate is certainly not wrong.

But housing, after all, is not stocks, nor is it Bitcoin.

If stocks go to zero, the worst that happens is you tighten your belt.

If housing is gone, where an 87-year-old person will sleep at night becomes a very real problem.

That’s why I’ve always found it strange:

The current law obviously hasn’t canceled the landlord’s right to repossess a house.

If tenants owe rent, they can be evicted.

If the lease legally expires, they can be evicted.

After a court ruling, it can be executed.

Even for vulnerable tenants, the current ordinary protection is nothing more than allowing social services to intervene first under specific conditions, providing a 2-month or 4-month buffer, and then the procedure continues.

And yet, this is still enough to scare the living daylights out of some ordinary people who have absolutely nothing to do with big capital.

They are clearly just ordinary workers who may at any time face illness, aging, unemployment, or rent hikes.

Yet they somehow grew a “noble heart” ready to shed blood and sacrifice themselves for the top billionaires at any moment.

Every day they worry about the return on investment for asset tycoons.

They worry about asset integrity for real estate companies.

They worry on behalf of capital whether the government is regulating too much.

In reality, they might still be budgeting strictly for their monthly rent, but mentally they’ve already taken a seat on the board of directors of a real estate firm.

They don’t have the assets yet, but they’ve already acquired the bourgeois consciousness.

But when facing an 87-year-old in a wheelchair who had lived there for 70 years, they suddenly become incredibly rational, incredibly calm, and incredibly legally savvy, instantly transforming into the coldest legal specialists:

“The contract expired; by law, they should get the hell out.”

The law needs rules.

The market needs efficiency.

Property rights, of course, also need protection.

I even believe that the problem of Spain’s judicial proceedings being too slow and landlords’ legal rights not being enforced in a timely manner should also be changed.

But a society is called civilized precisely because it consists of more than just cold contracts, property deeds, balance sheets, and an arrogant phrase:

“That’s the market.”

The court can rule that she must leave.

The property owner can also legally take back the house.

But society can equally ask:

For an 87-year-old person, who has reached the final stage of her life and has no realistic alternative housing, is it possible to give her a more decent resolution?

Later facts also proved:

There is.

In the end, both parties signed a new 8-year lease anyway.

The landlord did not lose their property rights.

And the elderly woman did not end up sleeping on the streets.

Capital was not eliminated.

The free market did not collapse because of it.

So what is truly absurd and laughable is this widespread “spiritual capitalist syndrome”:

A tenant in reality, a landlord in spirit.

An ordinary person in reality, already seated on the capitalist’s board of directors in spirit.

Under the gears of rules and efficiency, if one loses even the perception of the basic survival baseline for the most vulnerable, that is not called being rational.

That is called a self-imagined servility.