Madrid: Demands Met. Camp Stayed. Camp Cleared.

For five weeks, the Puerta del Sol camp was Madrid's miniature city in the middle of Madrid's actual city: tents, tarps, named streets, food distribution, a symbol of Spain's housing crisis that helped push the prime minister to call a snap election. Then, on October 30, the camp's own representatives dissolved their organising committees. Their original demand, they said, had been met — the government had passed several housing measures. The protest had won. The camp, however, stayed.

That is the part that writes itself. Most campers had already drifted away voluntarily, which is the normal ending for a protest that gets what it asked for. The remaining 334 occupants did not drift. They stayed in a camp whose organisers had declared the mission accomplished, which is a bit like winning the war and refusing to leave the trench because the trench has good vibes.

So at around 3 a.m. on Tuesday, some 400 police officers, plus firefighters and social services, cleared what was left of it. Two people were arrested for disobedience and resisting officers. City workers followed with water hoses, scrubbing graffiti off statues and disposing of the tarps strung between lamp posts. The square is a square again.

There is a real grievance underneath all of this — soaring rents, home shortages, evictions — and nothing here mocks it. The joke is narrower and fairer: a protest camp that outlived its own victory. Demands met is supposed to be the end of the story. Staying on after that is not protesting anymore. It is camping, and camping in the middle of Puerta del Sol eventually gets you woken up at 3 a.m. by people with a schedule.

Demands met. Camp stayed. Camp cleared. In that order, and only the middle one was optional.

The underlying reporting is filed in the Evidence Locker: Reuters (Nov. 3, 2026).