A Spanish woman has killed herself by jumping from the fifth floor of her Madrid flat as police tried to evict her.

The 65-year-old pensioner did not answer the door to bailiffs or police officers and then leapt from the window, a police spokesman said on Monday.

Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the leftwing Podemos party, said the woman’s name was Alicia and noted that thousands of families had suffered eviction this year.

He pledged his party would continue to campaign “to lower rents and guarantee the right to housing”.

According to El País, the number of people being evicted from their homes rose 6.1% in the second quarter of this year amid high rent rises. The newspaper said that unpaid rent accounted for more than three in five of 10,500 evictions in that period.

The property website Idealista said average rents in Spain rose 15.6% in the second quarter of the year compared with 2017.

The Socialist party government led by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has promised to tackle the growing issue of people being evicted from their homes.