Noelia Castillo waited 601 days longer than she wanted to.

The 25-year-old Barcelona resident died by euthanasia Thursday evening at a care facility in Sant Pere de Ribes. Her death came after an unprecedented legal battle—not with doctors or the state, but with her own father.

“At last, I’ve managed it,” Castillo told Spanish broadcaster Antena 3 the day before her death. “I just cannot go on anymore.”

Castillo became paraplegic in 2022 after jumping from a fifth-floor building in what she described as her second suicide attempt. She had struggled with psychiatric illness since her teens and said she had been sexually assaulted on multiple occasions. Her parents had separated when she was 13, and she spent part of her childhood in state care.

In July 2024, Catalonia’s Guarantee and Evaluation Commission unanimously approved her euthanasia request, finding she met the legal criteria: an irreversible condition causing severe dependency, chronic pain, and debilitating suffering.

Her scheduled date was August 2, 2024. Then her father, Gerónimo Castillo, obtained a court order to stop it.

Backed by the conservative Catholic group Abogados Cristianos, he argued that his daughter’s personality disorder rendered her incapable of making such a decision. The case wound through five courts over 18 months—Barcelona’s courts, Spain’s Supreme Court, and finally the European Court of Human Rights, which denied a last-minute appeal earlier this month.

All of them upheld Castillo’s right to die.

“The happiness of a father or a mother should not supersede the happiness of a daughter,” Castillo said.

Her case was the first under Spain’s 2021 euthanasia law to reach the courts. Since legalization, 1,123 people have received life-ending medicine through the end of 2024, according to the health ministry.

Disability rights groups called for a review of the law, arguing the state must guarantee dignified living conditions before facilitating death. Abogados Cristianos declared the case proof of the law’s “serious flaws.”

Castillo’s mother, Yolanda Ramos, said she didn’t agree with her daughter’s decision—but she respected it.

Sources