The Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) has confirmed the 19-year prison sentence imposed by the Court of Jaén on a man, currently 78 years old, for subjecting his wife to a constant climate of physical and verbal violence and continued sexual assaults during the more than 50 years that their marriage lasted while they lived in Barcelona and Andújar (Jaén).
The appeal ruling completely dismisses the appeal filed by the defendant's defense and ratifies the resolution of the Third Section of the Jaén Court issued in April 2025.
This resolution sentenced him to 15 years in prison for a continuous crime of sexual assault with the aggravation of kinship, three years for habitual abuse and one year in prison for a crime of abuse in the field of gender violence. Likewise, prohibitions on approaching and communicating with the victim were imposed for periods of between three and ten years exceeding the prison sentences.
The court of appeal considers fully accredited the account of proven facts, which describes how the accused constantly uttered degrading insults to his wife and ended the discussions by giving her "real beatings", sometimes in the presence of his children and grandson.
It was the accused's wife who recounted in court the more than half a century of abuse, rape and insults that she suffered from her ex-husband, since she met him when she was 17 years old and whom she apologized for and did not report until she was 71 years old when she feared losing her life in one of his beatings.
In fact, the court states that after each beating, in a "consequent and immediate" manner, the accused took her to the bedroom to have non-consensual sexual relations, which the defendant consummated despite the woman's crying. The resolution also confirms that in 2019 the accused forced the victim to have sexual relations against her will in the countryside, taking advantage of the fact that they were carrying out agricultural tasks.
The history of violence concluded after an episode that occurred on May 1, 2020, when the accused physically attacked his wife upon learning that the president of the neighborhood association had gone up to the house to check some dampness.
The appellant's defense questioned the sufficiency of the evidence and the credibility of the complainant, alleging an alleged spurious financial motive related to a will executed the day before the complaint.
However, the TSJA rejects this argument by remembering that the procedure was not initiated at the initiative of the victim, but rather by a call from a neighbor to 016 and the subsequent police intervention. Furthermore, it emphasizes that the woman expressly waived any type of financial compensation in her first judicial statement.
The court emphasizes that the complainant's statement has other corroborating elements. Among them, the direct testimonies of the couple's daughter and grandson stand out, who lived in the family home and witnessed the physical attacks and the subsequent dynamics in the bedroom, the statements of the police officers, the medical reports of injuries and the psychological reports that diagnose the victim with a depressive disorder and moderate-severe post-traumatic stress compatible with continued abuse.
Likewise, the Court supports the application of the aggravating circumstance of kinship to the crime of sexual assault under the Penal Code in force at the time of the events, rejecting that there is a double assessment of the marital bond with respect to crimes of abuse.
The TSJA also rules out the application of the mitigating circumstance of undue delays requested by the defense. The court states that the trial process took less than five years, a period that it describes as proportionate given the complexity of the case, which covers events that occurred over five decades, required multiple expert reports from various organizations and suffered modifications in its procedural processing.
