The far-right turns Noelia into a battering ram against the euthanasia law
BarcelonaWhen the law on euthanasia was approved in June 2021, support for the initiative was very broad in Spanish society, which had experienced emblematic cases such as that of Ramon Sampedro (died in 1998), who Javier Bardem played in Alejandro Amenábar's film Mar adentro, or that of Ángel Hernández, the man who helped his wife, María José Carrasco, to die in 2019 and who was acquitted of the crime of aiding suicide once the norm came into force. According to a CIS barometer from January 2021, 72% were in favor of the law and only 15% against.
Since that 2021, the number of requests and the number of aid-in-dying benefits have increased each year. According to official data, there were 75 people that same year; 288 in 2022, 334 in 2023, and 426 in 2024. Little by little, the application of the law has been normalizing, albeit with large territorial differences. Catalonia accounts for approximately one third of the completed processes, double what would correspond to it by population. If we look at the rate of euthanasia applied per 100,000 inhabitants, Catalonia (3.78) doubles that of Madrid (1.84).
For this reason, the far-right needed to find a concrete case that would serve as a battering ram to stop this normalization and reopen a debate that society seemed to have closed. And this case has been that of Noelia Castillo, who brings together all the ingredients and serves to present what has been an individual decision of an adult person, endorsed by all medical and bioethical committees, as practically the murder of a victim of State negligence, since Noelia was in a minors' center where she would have been raped.
Abogados Cristianos is part of an ultra-Catholic ecosystem that has a strong influence on Vox and important sectors of the PP, and which also includes other organizations such as Hazte Oír or El Yunque, very active on social media these days with this case. Journalist Santiago Mata, author of a book about El Yunque, states that Abogados Cristianos is a terminal of this ultra-Catholic sect. What is paradoxical is that this organization represents a father who renounced custody and whose daughter has always explained that he abandoned her and that she wants nothing to do with him. However, it can be stated that they have achieved their goal, since Noelia's ordeal may discourage many people from starting an uncertain process if they know that a parent disagrees.
The PP's doubts
Despite everything, politically who is galvanizing the opposition to Noelia Castillo's euthanasia is Vox, while the PP hesitates because the law divides the party. Thus, in the 2023 election program, Núñez Feijóo promised to reform the law in some specific points, with the idea of making its application more difficult, but without repealing it. The problem is that, three years later, politics has entered such a phase of cultural war that it is not unthinkable that Feijóo, and more so if he has to make a pact with Vox, will agree to repeal the law.
A demonstration of how the PP is increasingly immersed in this cultural war is Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who in the past had cultivated an image of a liberal and non-believer, and is now shifting on issues such as abortion, with the refusal to facilitate the creation of a registry of conscientious objector doctors. But lately she has gone further with the announcement of a law that will grant the benefits and tax exemptions of a child to a fetus of 12 weeks. This is what is known as the preliminary draft law for the recognition of the unborn.
Last week, Ayuso herself broke with her past and in an interview with Ok Diariodefined herself as a "practicing Catholic" and stated that "she went to mass practically every week". This shift may be real, but it may also be a political strategy that involves reconnecting with the national-Catholic past of the Spanish right to thus contest the vote with Vox. This ideological retreat of the right, in fact, is happening throughout the Western world, as demonstrated by the US Supreme Court ruling that ceased to consider abortion a right after almost half a century.