A quarter of the population who requested euthanasia in the Canary Islands died before their request was resolved. This is according to the data published in the 2024 Annual Report on the provision of assistance to die.
In total, 52 people requested a dignified death in the archipelago throughout the past year 2024. Of these, nearly half were resolved favorably (25 people), while two out of ten were denied (seven) or revoked (seven) because the applicant decided to withdraw from the procedure.
The most striking data is that of those people who died while their application was being processed. 25% of the applications were shelved and they died before seeing them resolved (thirteen people).
In total, 929 applications were submitted nationwide, of which 426 were favorably processed. By autonomous communities, Catalonia has been the region that has initiated the most end-of-life processes (303), followed by Madrid (129), the Basque Country (75), and Andalusia (72). The Canary Islands rank fifth in the list of initiated and accepted processes. In contrast, the autonomous city of Ceuta registered no applications, and Melilla only one, which was later withdrawn.
In percentage terms, the Basque Country and La Rioja are the autonomous communities that have resolved the most euthanasia requests positively, giving the go-ahead to six out of every ten procedures. Meanwhile, Murcia has been the autonomous community that has denied the most requests (33.33%).
The most frequent profile is that of applicants who are usually people over 80 years old (27.8%), with neurological (32.5%) and oncological (29.7%) diseases. Furthermore, the vast majority of times euthanasia was applied was in public healthcare centers (96.7%) and primary care centers (64.05%).
Spain has the lowest rate
Despite this data, Spain's mortality rate associated with euthanasia is 0.1% out of 1,000 deaths. These figures are well below other countries that have also regulated this aid in dying. For example, Health reveals that the Spanish rate is ten times lower than that of Australia (0.8%) and New Zealand (1%) and fifteen times lower than that of Switzerland (1.5%). If we compare it with Belgium (3.6%), it is between thirty times lower and, compared to Canada (4.7%), it is forty times lower.