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Spanish police cleared out a sprawling protest camp in central Madrid on Tuesday, ending more than a month of demonstrations over the country’s housing crisis that had pushed the government into early elections, police and activists said.
Municipal workers swept away the last tents, tarpaulins and debris from the capital’s iconic Puerta del Sol square on Tuesday morning as officers kept much of the area cordoned off, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters observed.
Protesters pitched their tents in September after an 87-year-old pensioner lost the Madrid home she had lived in all her life, thrusting the country’s long-running shortage into the spotlight.
Her eviction triggered rallies nationwide against soaring rents and weak tenant safeguards, drawing tens of thousands onto the streets.
Over the following weeks, the site grew into a makeshift mini-city for hundreds of people with its own clinic, canteen and meeting space, while similar camps appeared in Barcelona, Seville and Valencia.
The central government’s delegation in the Madrid region said police removed 334 people and detained two during the overnight operation, which “without incident or episodes of violence.”
Some 400 national and municipal officers took part alongside firefighters and social services.
Organizers, however, said on Telegram that the raid injured several people. Flor, a homeless 43-year-old who joined the camp early, told AFP riot officers stormed the square before dawn.
“They dragged us out, they hit us. They didn’t let us take away anything,” she said.
To ease the anger, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority coalition proposed curbs on evictions, but the measures stalled in parliament last month, prompting him to bring the general election forward to Nov. 29.
The Bank of Spain estimates the country lacks 700,000 homes.
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