Spanish Woman Dies by Euthanasia after Legal Battle with Neglectful Father

The death by euthanasia of a 25-year-old Spanish woman after a protracted legal battle with her father has triggered debate about the role of the state in caring for her and why it took so long to implement her wish to end her life.   Spain is one of a handful of European countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, that have passed laws allowing euthanasia to be carried out by physicians. The Catalan regional government had granted Noelia Castillo's request for assisted dying in 2024.

The case has received enormous attention in Spain, with Castillo's father and Christian Lawyers (Abogados Cristianos) attempting to block her death until the last moment. After an 18-month legal battle, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled this week in Noelia Castillo's favor. 

In October 2022, Castillo had thrown herself from the fifth floor of a building. It was then that she became paraplegic and requested euthanasia, a petition that was approved in July 2024 after the Catalan regional government agency determined that she was in an “irreversible” clinical condition causing her “severe dependency, chronic pain, and debilitating suffering.”  The government determined that she had met the requirements set by law and she passed on Thursday evening at a Barcelona hospital.  

It is ironic that Castillo was blocked by the very father who had neglected her during her youth and was the source of much of her anguish. 

Castillo had spent much of her childhood in care homes and had recounted the impact on her mental health of her father's chronic alcoholism and of being sexually assaulted by an ex-boyfriend and also (in a separate incident) by several men in a nightclub.  In a TV interview this week, she said nobody in her family had supported her decision to die by euthanasia, and her father "has never respected my decision and never will".  The first time Castillo mentioned her plans, her father yelled at her, she told Antena 3. “He told me I had no heart, that I didn’t think of others, that everything I said was a lie. It hurt me,” she recounted, before pointing out the contradiction between her father’s desire to keep her alive and his neglect. “He never calls me or writes to me. Why does he want me alive, just to keep me in a hospital?”  "He keeps telling me he understands me, but he doesn’t.  I want to go in peace now and stop suffering," she said in the interview broadcast the day before she died.  Her mother had disagreed with her decision but joined her at the Sant Camil Barcelona clinic.

A former friend of Castillo, Carla Rodríguez, tried to enter the hospital to persuade her to change her mind, but told Spanish media that police had barred her from entering.  British pianist James Rhodes, who lives in Spain, issued an appeal to Castillo via social media to reconsider and offered to pay her medical costs until she felt "able to take this decision from a slightly more tranquil place".  Christian Lawyers warned that her case had underlined failures in her care.  "For a girl who obviously has had a very tough life, which we all regret, the only thing that could be offered to her by the healthcare system is death," said José María Fernández, of Christian Lawyers.

The opposition conservative People's Party (PP), which voted against a 2021 euthanasia law, had a similar response.  "The institutions that should have protected Noelia failed her," wrote PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo on social media. He added: "I refuse to believe that the state did not have the tools to give her care."  In a statement, the Catholic Church, which is close to the PP, said that Castillo's story "reflects an accumulation of personal suffering and institutional failures".

However, other observers have taken issue with the fact that her wishes were thwarted by legal obstacles put in her way by her father and Christian Lawyers.  "The desire to put an end to her suffering by using the right to euthanasia was… sabotaged by a legal crusade that added nearly two years of pain to her existence," noted the left-leaning El País newspaper in an editorial.  Alberto Ibáñez, a member of Congress for the left-wing Sumar platform, said that "19 doctors have supported her decision and we should be respectful of it", while adding that it was a "deeply complex" issue.

Under Spain's 2021 law, any Spanish adult over 18 requesting euthanasia must be suffering from an incurable disease or "serious, chronic and disabling condition" and their decision must be taken free of external pressure.  The decision needs to have been made twice in writing and has to be certified by a doctor who then consults with another doctor.  The request then passes to a Guarantee and Evaluation Commission, which has the task of assessing if the conditions have been met.

According to government data, 426 requests for assisted dying were granted in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. This was the first time that a case went to court for a judge to decide.