Last year in Alicante, a woman who was stabbed on her way to work at a Benidorm hotel testified at the trial that two days before the assault her ex-husband warned her, saying, “I must stab you by my father’s grave.” He carried out the threat, but several bystanders intervened and prevented a more severe attack on the afternoon of April 23 the previous year. The defendant, who has suffered multiple strokes and now lives with chronic cognitive decline, told the court he does not remember the events but pleaded guilty and apologized.
During the testimony, the victim described twenty years of a volatile relationship marked by constant death threats from her husband, noting that she never reported them. “That was his habit, he threatened me all my life”, she stated.
The defendant has been in preventive detention since last year. He faces a sentence request of five years less than a day by the prosecution and the private accusation. Authorities accuse him of attempted homicide, with aggravating factors of kinship and gender, and argue an incomplete mental impairment as a partial exculpation. The private accusation has requested a restraining order of at least 500 meters for six years, with the prosecution asking for 300 meters, as well as a prohibition on contacting the victim and ten years of supervised liberty.
Defense
The defense attorney, Alejandro Dapena, has asked the court to impose a prison term between 20 and 30 months, arguing that the defendant did not intend to kill the woman. Alternatively, he proposed the sentence range from 30 to 40 months of imprisonment.
The victim, who was stabbed in the chest and once in the jaw, testified by videoconference and recalled a separate incident about a month before the attack when she was with a friend at a cafe near her home. Her former partner appeared at the bar, sat with them, and they talked, but when she returned home he began shouting insults, drove his motorcycle toward her, crushed her with the wheel, and then pulled a screwdriver to strike her. A man intervened, and she fled. She went to the police station but later said she did not want to press charges about the incident after learning he would be imprisoned.
Two days before the offense, the victim says she received another call from her ex-husband in which he again threatened her: “By my father’s grave, I have to stab you.” She did not file a report, and when she arrived at the hotel parking where she worked, the defendant was waiting for her. He approached and began striking her with punches and stabbing her with a knife, while she tried to determine whether he was also saying he would kill her.
Aid & Response
The woman was helped by several bystanders in the area, some of whom initially thought it was a joke. They separated the attacker and took the victim to a safe place to treat the knife wounds. The accused fled and was later arrested by the police.
The defendant has stated that he used a keychain to injure her, not a knife, and although the woman claims no one has apologised on her behalf, others close to the defendant say he did, even claiming that he sent his son to the hospital for him to do so.
Regarding the assault, the defendant said that he does not remember because he had taken many pills and has a brain injury. A forensic expert explained in court that the defendant had suffered several prior strokes, including one days before the events, which could have caused a partial loss of cognitive and volitional capacity on the day of the stabbing. The specialist noted chronic brain deterioration in the defendant.
Both the prosecution and the private accusation argued that the defendant had clear intent to kill, and that the injuries could have been fatal with greater depth. Aside from memory, the rest of his faculties remained intact. The defense contended that the defendant did not intend to kill and that the woman’s life was not in danger from the wounds. They also argued that the history of repeated threats showed an abusive pattern rather than a single act of violence, and that the ex-wife never filed a report during the relationship.