The total failure of Noelia Castillo by the Spanish State

The tale of Noelia Castillo is one of those rare horror stories that stands out even amidst the grim grind of the daily news cycle. It’s the story of a girl who experienced untold suffering in her short life and who was ultimately failed - betrayed, you might more accurately say - by the system that was designed to help people like her.

But it was designed by a different people, a people who evidently knew better than the average Spanish civil servant of the 2020s. A people who knew that killing suffering Spaniards didn’t solve their problems, but eliminated them.

Yesterday evening, 25-year-old Spanish woman Noelia Castillo Ramos was killed via euthanasia at the Sant Pere de Ribes long-term care facility in Barcelona. This was despite a lengthy legal challenge from her father to the procedure, whose appeals were ultimately struck down at every level.

Ms Castillo sought euthanasia following what was clearly long-term suffering. She was placed in state care at 13 following the separation of her parents. In those years, she reportedly attempted to commit suicide twice, following which her mother took her to psychiatric hospitals in an effort to get her help.

In 2021, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and a year later after yet another suicide attempt, her disability status worsened as a result of the injuries she suffered. Noelia jumped from a fifth floor window in October 2022, an incident that left her mostly paralysed from the waist down and reliant on a wheelchair.

She did this, according to her own testimony, only a handful of days after being sexually assaulted by “three guys at the same time” at a nightclub. Unbelievably (and I don’t say that to diminish her experience, but rather to emphasise the perversity of the situation), it wasn’t the first time she was sexually assaulted, either.

In an interview just days before she was euthanised with the Spanish TV programme, Y Ahora Sonsoles, Noelia told of a first sexual assault, carried out by an ex-boyfriend, after which she stated that on another occasion, two boys at a nightclub “tried to sexually assault” her.

It was after this that the third incident, that precipitated her jumping from the fifth-floor window, took place.

Some readers who’ve been following the story online may be frustrated here that I’ve apparently left out the crucial identities of the assailants involved in that last heinous attack. That is because the claims circulating online, that variously suggest it was an attack involving three illegal migrants that took place in a state-run facility, cannot be verified, and seem to run contrary to what’s on the record.

That suggestion reportedly has its origins in her father’s legal team’s claim that Noelia “met with a boy” while living in a “juvenile detention center,” and that several “unaccompanied minors” showed up and sexually assaulted her. The organisation subsequently said that its only evidence of this was confirmation from a family member that an incident of that nature had occurred.

Noelia’s recent interview paints a different picture. She explicitly stated that the final incident, as well as the attempted assault that preceded it, took place in a nightclub, and she doesn’t make any reference to names or nationalities of those involved. What’s more, in the same interview she said that she did not report the incidents to the police, which obviously limited their ability to investigate the attack and bring the perpetrators to justice.

It is worth getting to the bottom of these things as best we can, because the case is outrageous enough without embellishment.

Two years after her suicide attempt (so in 2024), Noelia requested euthanasia, which had been legalised in Spain in 2021, from the Guarantee and Evaluation Commission of Catalonia (CGAC), the body created to oversee the application of the euthanasia law. Her request was approved later that year after the commission determined that she was in an “irreversible” clinical condition causing her “severe dependency, chronic pain, and debilitating suffering”.

She was due to be euthanised in August that year, but it was then that her father launched his legal objection, an effort that would prolong Noelia’s wait, but ultimately fail to deter her.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled earlier this month in Noelia's favour and, as mentioned, her death was sadly confirmed late on Thursday.

In the interview broadcast earlier this week, Noelia cut a striking figure. Dressed in white with a bow in her hair, her wide, red-rimmed eyes belied her superficial composure. Indeed, the words she spoke indicated that she was coming from a place of the deepest darkness.

As per Sky’s reporting of the pertinent comments:

“‘I want to go now in peace and stop suffering, period,’ Noelia had told Spanish TV programme Y Ahora Sonsoles in her only interview, recorded at her maternal grandmother's house.

“Noelia said she had been ‘very clear’ about her wish to die from the beginning.

“‘None of my family is in favour of euthanasia. But what about all the pain I've suffered during all these years,’ she said.

“‘The happiness of a father, a mother, or a sister cannot be more important than the life of a daughter.’

“She said she ‘always felt alone’ and ‘saw my world as very dark’, even before requesting euthanasia. She added that she doesn't feel like ‘doing anything’, has back and leg pain and said sleeping was ‘very difficult’.”

To get to the crux of the horror, it must be understood that in deeming Noelia eligible for euthanasia, and in actually killing her, Spanish society confirmed her in her view of the world as a “very dark” place. It did what all proponents of euthanasia are doing beneath the florid talk of ‘dignity’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘choice’, and endorsed the perspective that her life was irredeemable. That if she could be helped, it wasn’t worth it, because there was an easier option. Killing her.

While it’s true that Noelia didn’t file a police report, we ultimately have the perverse situation in which her assailants are walking around scot-free - possibly none the wiser about the road that their actions sent her down - while she’s now dead as a result of the suffering they caused, a development not only supported, but facilitated by the Spanish state. 

From the politicians who legislated for it, to the courts that, as the Guardian’s report put it, upheld her right to “end her life on her own terms”, to the medical service that stabbed the central tenet of the Hippocratic Oath through the heart in carrying the euthanasia out.

It is an increasingly dark world, but not primarily because of the suffering to be found in it. Not to sound callous, but that has always been present, and it has always been awful. It is increasingly dark because our response to it is increasingly to wipe our hands of those who are suffering, to hasten their departure from this world and to pat our backs at our compassion. 

Noelia was failed every step of the way on her journey through this life. A troubled family life lead to being shunted through state facilities, after which time she was sexually assaulted - repeatedly - by predatory men who, it would seem, remain at large. She did not get the help she needed to heal, and to live, but rather was offered the help she needed to kill herself.

That's some progress. Right off a cliff edge.

   

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Jason Osborne

This article was first published on Gript and is printed here with permission

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