Madrid, (EFE).- Noelia Castillo, a 25-year-old Spanish woman, passed away on Thursday at the Sant Camil Residential Hospital in Barcelona after receiving euthanasia. Her death concludes a judicial dispute of over a year and a half against her father.
Noelia suffered from paraplegia with permanent and irreversible after-effects following a suicide attempt in 2022. In Apr. 2024, she formally requested assisted dying under the Spanish law.
Although the Guarantee and Evaluation Commission of Catalonia approved her request, her father launched a legal offensive to halt the process. Advised by the organization Abogados Cristianos (Christian Lawyers), the father argued that Noelia lacked the mental capacity to decide.
An exhaustive judicial journey
The case went through the local court, the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (Northern Spain), the Supreme Court, and the Constitutional Court, which dismissed the final appeal where the father again requested an urgent precautionary suspension of the euthanasia.
Finally, almost two years later, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) refused to halt the euthanasia, as her father had requested after exhausting all legal avenues in Spain.
In all instances, the justice system determined that Noelia maintained her mental faculties and that her decision was free, firm, and conscious.
Media buzz and disinformation
In the final stretch of this legal fight, the young woman agreed to be interviewed by a well-known television program on the Spanish channel Antena 3.
In the interview, she stated that she never doubted stopping the process because she “was very clear from the beginning,” despite her family being against her decision.
“I want to go in peace now and stop suffering, period. The happiness of a father, a mother, or a sister cannot be above the happiness of a daughter,” she explained in one of the aired segments.
The interview was the peak moment of a media frenzy that sparked heated debates in the press and more than one hoax on social media.
In her interview, she recounted a very unhappy childhood and youth, which included abuse, but she never mentioned foreign aggressors.
The outcome
On Thursday at 6:00 pm, the young woman’s wishes were fulfilled in her hospital room, according to a statement from the Abogados Cristianos entity reporting that the euthanasia took place on that day.
Meanwhile, outside the hospital, supporters of Abogados Cristianos gathered in protest.
The final medical reports ratified that Noelia was suffering constant distress and that the health system simply complied with a legally recognized right after exhausting all judicial guarantees.
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