Noelia Castillo, a 25-year-old Spanish woman who sought euthanasia and pursued a prolonged court battle with her family, received life-ending medicine in Barcelona on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. The AP said Castillo’s case drew national attention as she fought to end her life and her relatives challenged the decision through Spain’s legal system.
Castillo’s efforts began nearly two years before Thursday, after a medical body in Catalonia approved her euthanasia request in 2024. The AP said the Catalonia panel reviewed her situation under Spain’s legal framework and determined her condition met the law’s requirements, describing it as serious and incurable and involving what it characterized as severe, chronic and debilitating suffering.
Spain passed legislation in 2021 that enshrined the right to euthanasia and medically assisted suicide for patients who meet certain conditions. Under that law, the AP said patients submit two written requests and then have consultations with medical professionals not previously involved in the case, and the process has faced criticism from conservative political parties and the Catholic Church.
The AP said Castillo’s family opposed the decision and were represented by Abogados Cristianos, a conservative Catholic organization. The AP reported that Abogados Cristianos confirmed on Thursday that Castillo had died at a Barcelona hospital, where a small group of people had gathered outside, according to the AP.
Abogados Cristianos’ president, Polonia Castellanos, said Castillo’s family was deeply disappointed and believed the Spanish government had abandoned and failed their daughter by allowing her to die. In a quoted statement reported by the AP, Castellanos said: “Death is the last option, especially when you’re very young,” and later described the case as evidence the euthanasia law was failing citizens.
In court filings and appeals described by the AP, Castillo’s father challenged the Catalonia approval, arguing that her mental illness made her incapable of making the decision. A court in August 2024 suspended the euthanasia request while it deliberated, the AP said, before Barcelona judges ruled in Castillo’s favor and her father’s lawyers appealed again—eventually bringing the dispute to Spain’s Supreme Court. The AP reported that in January the Supreme Court upheld Castillo’s right to euthanasia.
After Spain’s top court ruling, the AP said Abogados Cristianos attempted a final halt by appealing to the European Court of Human Rights earlier this month, but that bid was denied. Before Castillo died, Castellanos repeated the family’s position about Castillo’s diagnosis and argued that the law should not allow euthanasia in a case involving what she said was a treatable condition, saying: “I think this is proof of the failure of the law and that it has to be urgently repealed.”
The AP reported that Castillo previously told Spanish broadcaster Antena 3 in an interview aired Wednesday that she had finally achieved what she sought. In the AP account, Castillo said: “At last, I’ve managed it, so let’s see if I can finally rest now,” and also: “I just cannot go on anymore.” In the same AP report, Castillo said she did not want her family to be around when she died, and she described herself as misunderstood while acknowledging that her case had drawn intense media attention.
Castillo’s background, as described by the AP, included psychiatric illness since she was a teenager, and two suicide attempts, with the second in 2022 occurring after she said she was sexually assaulted. The AP said injuries from that second attempt left Castillo unable to use her legs and in a wheelchair, and it said the AP does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Castillo had done.
A Madrid disability rights group called for a review of Spain’s euthanasia law, the AP said, arguing that any system should improve resources for people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, or high dependency. The AP quoted Javier Font, president of the Federation of Associations of People with Physical and Organic Disabilities of Madrid, saying: “Before facilitating death, the system must effectively guarantee the conditions for living with dignity.”
The AP also said Spain is one of nine European countries with laws allowing assisted suicide in cases described as unbearable suffering, according to a U.K.-based rights group, Dignity in Dying. The AP drew a distinction between euthanasia, where doctors actively kill patients by giving them a lethal injection, and medically assisted suicide, where patients themselves take prescribed lethal medication.
The AP reported that since Spain adopted its euthanasia law, 1,123 people had been given life-ending medicine through the end of 2024, citing the country’s health ministry. The AP said Castillo told Spanish TV that she never questioned her decision and described her reasoning as a question of whose happiness should prevail, saying: “The happiness of a father or a mother should not supersede the happiness of a daughter.”