Spanish woman Noelia, 25, undergoes euthanasia after winning legal battle with father

Anti euthanasia protesters stand outside the Spanish parliament in Madrid in March 2021.

The banner reads “Government of Death” in Spanish.

Photo: AP A 25-year-old woman who has been paraplegic since a failed suicide attempt underwent euthanasia in Spain on Thursday, after her father lost a lengthy legal battle to stop the procedure, Spanish media reported.

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 6pm 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 television station Antena 3 on the eve of her death. “I can’t handle this family any more, I can’t handle the pain, I can’t handle everything that haunts me from what I’ve been through,” she added.

A man holds a placard reading “To choose to die without suffering” during a demonstration in support of a law legalising euthanasia in Madrid in March 2021.

Photo: AFP 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 help 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.

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.

He took the case to the Supreme Court, and when this failed, the Constitutional Court w

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