A woman was fatally attacked in broad daylight in Barcelona yesterday, stabbed repeatedly in the throat, chest and stomach before the suspected assailant fled the scene on foot.
The attack unfolded just before 11am on Joan Miró street in the residential suburb of Esplugues de Llobregat, an area near the Nou Camp stadium popular with British tourists and close to three international schools. Witnesses described seeing a man brandishing a large knife openly and showing signs of nervousness before he approached the woman, slashed her throat and struck her multiple times. Blood was visible along the pavement as emergency services rushed to the scene.
Paramedics treated the woman at the scene, but she died from her injuries. The victim has been described locally as a young woman, and the Esplugues Town Hall has referred to her as a “local woman”. A 50-year-old man who intervened during the attack sustained defensive stab wounds to his arm; his condition is not thought to be serious. Neither the woman nor the suspect has been formally identified, and the investigation is under judicial secrecy.
Arrest and investigation
A large-scale manhunt was launched immediately after the stabbing. The suspect, who was wearing jeans and a hoodie and carrying a large black rucksack, was detained by officers from the Catalan police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, shortly afterwards in the Les Corts neighbourhood of Barcelona. The Criminal Investigation Division (DIC) of the Mossos is leading the inquiry. Terrorism has been ruled out as a motive, police have confirmed.
Images taken after the attack showed a forensic tent covering the woman’s body. Police are examining whether the suspect also attacked the man who suffered minor injuries nearby. While officers have not yet confirmed whether the woman and her alleged attacker knew each other, police sources have indicated there was no romantic relationship between them. Some sources suggest investigators are focusing on the theory of a random stabbing, although the case is being treated as gender-based violence – referred to locally as “macho violence”.
The Esplugues City Council said it “deeply regrets the violent death of a person in the city” and extended condolences to the woman’s family and loved ones. It asked the public to avoid spreading unverified information and expressed concern about the impact of the serious event on “coexistence and citizen security”. The council has decreed two days of official mourning.
Gender-based violence: a persistent crisis in Spain
The killing has thrown a fresh spotlight on the scale of gender-based violence across Spain, where campaigners and officials have long warned of a deep-rooted problem. Data from Spain’s monitoring agency for domestic and gender-based violence shows that in 2023 – the most recent full year for which figures are available – 49 women and one man were killed by partners or ex-partners.
Of the women killed, only 11 had filed a prior complaint, equalling what the agency described as the “lowest percentage on record”. Five of those women were protected by restraining orders when they died, and seven of the 11 who had reported their abuser were still living with that person at the time of their death. Looking at records stretching back to 2003, the agency found that in almost three-quarters of cases, the woman shared a home with her abuser.
Broader official statistics underline the scale of the problem. In 2023, Spanish courts received 199,282 reports of intimate partner or ex-partner violence – an increase of 9.5% on the previous year. The same year, 36,582 women were registered as victims of gender-based violence, a rise of 12.1%. The rate stood at 1.7 victims per 1,000 women aged 14 and over.
Over the longer term, between 2003 and 2024, police recorded 1,293 women killed by their male intimate partners or ex-partners in what are classified as femicides. The case in Esplugues de Llobregat, while it may prove to have been a random attack, is being investigated under the framework of gender-based violence – a designation that activists say is critical to ensuring the state’s full response and resources are brought to bear.
