A 25-year-old woman who has been paraplegic since a failed suicide attempt underwent euthanasia in Spain on Thursday in a case that has divided Spanish society.
Her case was the first to reach a Spanish court for consideration since Spain became one of the few countries to legalise euthanasia in 2021, a law fiercely opposed by the Catholic Church.
The woman, identified as Noelia, died shortly after 6:00 pm (1700 GMT) at a hospital in Sant Pere de Ribes in the northeastern region of Catalonia, public television TVE and other media said.
“I simply want to go in peace and stop suffering,” she said in an interview broadcast on Spanish TV station Antena 3 on the eve of her death.
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“I can’t handle this family anymore, I can’t handle the pain, I can’t handle everything that haunts me from what I’ve been through,” she added.
Noelia recalled during the interview that she entered foster care when she was 13 after her parents split, and accused her father of neglect, saying he “never calls”.
“What does he want me alive for, just to keep me in a hospital?” she asked.
The 2021 law passed by Spain’s leftist government stipulates that anyone of sound mind who is suffering from a “serious and incurable illness” or a “chronic and disabling” condition can request assistance to die.
Noelia attempted suicide by throwing herself from the fifth floor of a building in 2022 after being sexually assaulted.
She has been in a wheelchair ever since and was paralysed from the waist down.
‘Failure’
Noelia in April 2024 requested permission to exercise her right to die, and was due to undergo euthanasia in August 2024 after a health board in the northeastern Catalonia supported her bid.
But the process was suspended at the last minute after her father filed a legal objection backed by the conservative campaign group Abogados Cristianos (Christian Lawyers), with a court applying precautionary measures.
The father argued his daughter suffered from mental disorders that “could affect her ability to make a free and conscious decision” as required by law.
READ ALSO: How does euthanasia work in Spain
He took the case to the Supreme Court, and when this failed, the Constitutional Court which in February rejected his bid to stop the euthanasia.
Having exhausted all legal avenues in Spain, he turned to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) where his bid to block the euthanasia was also rejected.
A lawyer for Abogados Cristianos, Jose María Fernández, called the euthanasia of Noelia a “failure” of Spain’s healthcare system that “only provided her with death”.
“She should have received treatment for her mental illnesses,” he told reporters just before Noelia’s euthanasia was due to take place.
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‘Angry and concerned’
The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) wrote on X that in Spain “death is being presented as a solution to suffering” in a society “incapable of caring and loving”. The post was signed #Noelia.
But Catalonia’s euthanasia advocacy group Derecho a Morir Dignamente (Right to Die With Dignity) called for a legal amendment to prevent appeals from dragging on and third parties from interfering in authorised procedures.
The moves taken to block Noelia’s euthanasia “left us very angry and concerned”, the group’s president, Cristina Valles, told AFP.
When the euthanasia law was passed in 2021, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Spain had become “more humane, fairer and freer”.
Lawmakers from Spain’s left-wing governing coalition and other parties supported it, while conservative and far-right MPs voted against the legislation, vowing to overturn it in the future.
Since the euthanasia law come into effect in June 2021 until the end of 2024, 1,123 people have received assistance to die in Spain, according to the latest health ministry figures.
Article by Rosa Sulleiro.
