Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Spain’s push for housing reform, U.S. forces withdrawing from Iraq, and the White House’s latest trade ban on Canada.
Stronger Tenant Protections
Less than a week after an 87-year-old Madrid resident was forcibly evicted from her apartment via stretcher, becoming a symbol of Spain’s real estate crisis, the woman is being allowed to return home. Her legal victory may mark the beginning of Spain’s path toward housing reform as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez unveils new legislation in response to mass anti-government protests.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Spain’s push for housing reform, U.S. forces withdrawing from Iraq, and the White House’s latest trade ban on Canada.
Stronger Tenant Protections
Less than a week after an 87-year-old Madrid resident was forcibly evicted from her apartment via stretcher, becoming a symbol of Spain’s real estate crisis, the woman is being allowed to return home. Her legal victory may mark the beginning of Spain’s path toward housing reform as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez unveils new legislation in response to mass anti-government protests.
On Wednesday, Spanish police removed María del Carmen Abascal from a home that she’d lived in for seven decades, citing an eviction order by the investment firm that had purchased her apartment. Abascal was unable to afford the ensuing 230 percent rent hike.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in response, demanding stronger tenant protections against rent increases and a ban on evictions when no other housing is available nearby.
This crisis was decades in the making. In the early 2000s, Spain invested heavily in construction. But when the 2008 financial crisis hit, prices sank, and the real estate market floundered. In a bid to revive the industry, Madrid passed legislation that would make it easier for investors and landlords to buy in. However, too many short-term rentals, booming tourism, greater foreign investment, and an immigration influx created a shortage of affordable homes.
Between 2014 and 2024, rents across the country increased as much as 80 percent. Meanwhile, paradoxically, more than 3.8 million homes are believed to be abandoned in outlying areas of the country where jobs are harder to come by. Madrid’s central bank predicts that the nation’s housing deficit could exceed 1 million homes by 2028.
Cue Abascal’s eviction. On Tuesday, her lawyer announced an agreement with the investment firm: an eight-year lease with a monthly rent equivalent to 30 percent of her pension (roughly $460). “This is historic!” Madrid’s tenant union, which organized the protests, wrote on X, adding that “together we are stronger than any politician, judge, or speculator.”
But Abascal’s legal win is just the start of the process. That same day, Sánchez’s coalition government said it had reached a deal to introduce two housing proposals for a parliamentary vote as soon as Friday. The first measure would freeze evictions for vulnerable tenants until 2030 and bolster other tenant protections, such as bans on so-called vulture funds, curbs on short-term rentals, and the option to extend expired leases for an additional two years. Experts suggest that this proposal is likely to pass.
However, Sánchez’s second measure is expected to face heavy criticism from the country’s conservative opposition. That policy would allow the automatic renewal of rental agreements without the possibility of rent increases or lease expirations. The right-wing People’s Party (PP) has long criticized Sánchez’s minority government for not doing enough to support housing reform; conservative legislators have blamed Sánchez’s open-door immigration policy for being the reason why Spain’s housing demand outpaces supply.
These proposals “are not going to produce results,” PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said. “Nobody can solve a problem they have created over eight years with [legislation] whose sole purpose is to prolong a barren parliamentary term.”
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Risks of withdrawal. U.S. forces are preparing to pull out of their last bases in Iraq by Wednesday to meet a withdrawal deadline set in 2024. Although the planned departure appears to be popular among Iraqis, experts fear that Baghdad is not ready to fully take over security, leaving the country vulnerable to Iran and its proxy groups as well as other U.S. adversaries, including the Islamic State.
The U.S. withdrawal is “a historic victory for the Iraqi Islamic resistance groups and honorable Iraqis, and a crushing defeat for the American project,” said Abu Mojtaba al-Yasiri, a commander in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a group of Iran-backed militias.
U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003 to oust Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and remained in the country until 2011 to support the Shiite-led government. Less than three years later, U.S. troops returned to fight the Islamic State and have since routinely operated U.S. bases from Iraqi soil to provide a counterweight against Iranian influence in the region. Iraq remains the only Middle Eastern country to consistently maintain close political and military ties with Washington and Tehran.
Trump’s latest trade ban. A U.S. ban on more than $1 billion worth of Canadian goods took effect on Tuesday, marking the latest salvo in the White House’s ongoing trade war with Ottawa. Targeting a slew of critical products—including dairy, alcohol, and cars—the ban is part of a series of retaliatory actions that Washington announced earlier this month in response to Canadian tariffs ranging from 15 percent to 50 percent on U.S. goods.
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump called Canada “one of the worst countries in the entire world” for what he claims are Ottawa’s unfair trade practices. “You know, we get along with China, we get along with people, and we make good deals,” Trump said. “But Canada has been really very difficult to deal with.” Trump has repeatedly insulted Canadian leadership, imposed hefty tariffs on Canadian goods, and threatened to make Canada the 51st U.S. state.
Ottawa has responded by diversifying its trading partners, prioritizing domestic production, and sidling closer to the European Union. On the same day that Trump berated Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney celebrated a new rail deal that will make passenger cars once manufactured in the United States “be built in Canada, with Canadian materials, and by Canadian workers.”
Civilian casualties. A Myanmar military airstrike near a market in rebel-controlled territory on Monday killed at least 50 people and wounded dozens more, according to local aid workers on Tuesday. The Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, accused the country’s armed forces of dropping two bombs in the town of Kyauktaw as part of a deliberate attack on civilians, and it vowed to take “effective retaliatory measures” in the near future.
Myanmar has been embroiled in civil war since February 2021, when Gen. Min Aung Hlaing led a military coup ousting a democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Since then, around 100,000 people have been killed, roughly 3.5 million residents have been displaced, and more than 12 million have faced acute hunger. Monday’s airstrike marked one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in months.
Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, has yet to comment on the assault. However, it has previously insisted that it only targets legitimate military infrastructure and “exercises maximum restraint to avoid civilian harm.” In December, a military airstrike on a hospital in Rakhine state killed at least 34 people and injured 80 others.
Odds and Ends
A lower-division soccer club got another chance to test its mettle on Tuesday, after the English Football Association (FA) ordered a full game replay over a refereeing error. Earlier this month, Woodford Town’s successful penalty kick against the Mulbarton Wanderers was disallowed for player encroachment, granting Mulbarton an indirect free kick that helped propel it to a 2-1 victory. However, an FA panel ruled on Friday that the kick should have been awarded or retaken, not disallowed. Now, all eyes are on the village teams to see who will (actually) win the FA Cup qualifying match.
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