Bankruptcy is not the answer, either. Mortgage debt is specifically excluded in those proceedings here. It is a debt that people can never escape.

“We have not changed the law yet,” Ms. Colau said. “But there is progress. The banks are talking to people now, and they were not before.”

MS. COLAU’S recent fame does not seem to have touched her. Arguing with politicians on television, she can sound hard edged and feisty. But answering questions on a recent evening she seems motherly and laughs easily. She is wearing a bulky, worn sweater, stretched out at the sleeves. Around her neck is a hand-knit scarf, a gift from an elderly woman who approached her after she spoke at a neighborhood meeting one night.

She laughs at the uproar over her parliamentary testimony, saying the use of the word “criminal” was entirely spontaneous. “I had no idea that he would be testifying before me and he would say all those things,” she said. “It just came to me. I really did not plan it.”

Ms. Colau, 39, has been an activist since she was a student studying philosophy. Working for one cause or another (antiwar, antiglobalization, pro-housing for the poor) she has often barely made ends meet. She lived as a squatter for a while, and has had more than 20 odd jobs, she said. “I survived precariously at times,” she said. “Somehow, we just always got by.”

She now has a 2-year-old son with her partner, Adria Alemany, an economist who shares her passion for social struggles.

“No romantic dinners, no movies,” she said with a shrug. “Activism has been our life.”

Ms. Colau was one of the early organizers of the PAH, which was founded just four years ago, as Spain’s economic crisis began taking its toll and thousands of newly unemployed Spaniards started to fall behind on their mortgage payments. Ms. Colau said the need for the PAH, which now has 200 centers across Spain, was immediately obvious.