Madrid police clear final holdouts from five-week housing camp

Riot police entered Madrid's Puerta del Sol at around 3 a.m. local time Tuesday and cleared the remaining 334 occupants of the square's five-week encampment, according to the office of the central government's representative in Madrid. Two people were arrested for disobedience and resisting officers. The operation pulled in roughly 400 police, backed by firefighters and social services.

Protesters pushed back hard on the government's version of events. Writing on their Telegram channel, they said the clearing was violent, claiming several campers were beaten and hit with pepper spray. The government, in a separate statement, said there had been no violence or disturbances. Reuters footage showed city workers hosing down the square, scrubbing graffiti off statues and hauling away the big plastic tarps strung between lamp posts.

The camp didn't start out as a police operation. It grew out of outrage over the eviction of an 87-year-old woman, who later died, and tenants' unions answered with marches across Spain. Similar camps popped up in squares in other major Spanish cities and in neighbouring Portugal. Sol itself morphed into a miniature city, complete with named streets, information stands, cultural programming and food distribution.

The encampment carried real political weight. It became a visual shorthand for Spain's soaring rents, home shortages and evictions, and it fed into Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's decision to call a snap general election for November 29.

The endgame was already in motion before police arrived. On October 30, the campers' main representatives said they were dissolving their organizing committees because their original demand had been met after the government passed a series of housing measures. Instead, they set their sights on a general strike over housing rights and the cost of living planned for November 11.

Not everyone in the square was there as an activist. According to the government, a large share of the people still sleeping in Sol were homeless or belonged to other vulnerable groups.