Yolanda Ramos, mother of Noelia Castillo, the 25-year-old who underwent euthanasia in Spain on 26 March 2023, has filed a formal complaint with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, to investigate whether the Spanish State fulfilled its obligation to protect her daughter before authorizing her death.
The complaint does not merely question the application of the euthanasia law, but raises whether Spain failed to meet its international obligations to protect a woman who was a victim of violence and in an extremely vulnerable situation.
A life marked by lack of protection
The document sent to the Special Rapporteur details the numerous risk factors that converged in Noelia Castillo’s life. The young woman grew up in a context of severe social and economic vulnerability that led to her being admitted for several years to a state-protected institution. She later became a victim of intimate partner violence and of a group sexual assault, experiences which, according to the complaint, «profoundly marked her mental health and exacerbated an already extremely delicate situation».
Noelia’s mother recently lodged formal complaints with the Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the sexual assaults. According to the family, Noelia first mentioned these events in court, explaining in 2022 that the suicide attempt that resulted in paraplegia—affecting her motor capacity from the knee down—was due to a multiple assault. At the time, no complaint or investigation was made, and Noelia only referred to it again in a televised interview prior to her death.
Prior diagnoses and absence of reinforced protection
Before her suicide attempt, Noelia had already been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder with suicidal ideation, and chronic depression, with a recognized disability of 67%. Following the 2022 episode, her degree of disability was increased only to 74%, below the threshold necessary to access sufficient financial benefits, which, according to the complaint, «contributed to maintaining her situation of dependence and vulnerability».
The family alleges that, after the suicide attempt, «the State did not deploy the reinforced protection that the situation required». The document further underscores that during the euthanasia process, Noelia ceased to receive psychiatric treatment and remained without effective mental health care, «with no guarantee that the public administrations ensured continuity of care or exhausted all therapeutic, psychological, psychiatric, palliative, and social alternatives before authorizing an irreversible decision».
«Chain of omissions and State failures»
The complaint cites as evidence the fact that the doctor responsible for processing the euthanasia explicitly acknowledged in a report that «until now, the resources provided have been insufficient and have not alleviated the patient’s suffering or lack of meaning in life». For the family, this admission demonstrates that the procedure itself acknowledged the inadequacy of the resources provided before authorizing Noelia’s death.
Consequently, the document argues that «Noelia’s death was not the result of a single medical decision, but the outcome of a chain of omissions and failures by the State», which, across its various administrations, «failed to deploy the reinforced protection it was duty-bound to provide to a woman who was a victim of violence, suffering from severe mental disorders, and in an extremely vulnerable situation, thereby allowing her to access euthanasia without exhausting all reasonable alternatives oriented toward life».
Concrete requests to the United Nations
Yolanda Ramos asks the Special Rapporteur to request information from the Government of Spain regarding the actions of public administrations, to investigate whether all medical, psychological, psychiatric, therapeutic, palliative, and social alternatives were exhausted before authorizing euthanasia, and to assess whether the procedure complied with international obligations of due diligence regarding a woman who was a victim of violence and especially vulnerable. She also requests an evaluation of whether Spanish legislation and protocols offer sufficient protection to women in similar circumstances.
«My daughter had suffered violence, mental illness, poverty, and exclusion. All I ask is that the United Nations investigate whether Spain did everything it should have to protect her before authorizing her death», declared Yolanda Ramos.
Medical and judicial endorsement
It should be noted that clinical psychology and psychiatry professionals who evaluated Noelia concluded that the young woman understood the gravity of the measure requested and remained resolute in her decision. The evaluations confirmed that she had an IQ within the normal range, exhibited no thought disorder, and suffered chronic depressive symptoms causing «unbearable» psychic suffering—attributed to the spinal cord injury sustained after her suicide attempt. The courts endorsed the view that her euthanasia request was «free, free from interference or influence of her own mental illness», following an expert assessment in which up to six physicians testified that Noelia was capable of discernment and decision-making regarding her life.