In Memory of Noelia Castillo Ramos

Noelia Castillo Ramos (2000 - 2026)  

 

All she desired was the brief experience of a life free from suffering 

so that pain is forgotten in the eternity of an instant ...

 

 

I. 

 

The tragic case of Noellia Castillo Ramos - the young Spanish woman who died at her own request, aged 25, earlier this week - is one that has attracted significant public attention and roused a good deal of emotion. 

 

 

II. 

 

The facts of the case certainly make for grim reading ... 

 

Taken into social care as a young teen, Noelia was diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder. She remained in care until she was eighteen. 

 

Following a sexual assault by a group of three males at a nightclub in 2022, Noelia attempted suicide by jumping from the fifth floor of a building. She survived, but was left paralysed from the waist down and suffered chronic physical pain and severe psychological suffering as a result. 

 

And so, invoking the provisions of existing Spanish law [1], Noelia formally requested the right to die in 2024. 

 

After a protracted two-year legal battle, during which her father had argued she was incapable of making her own judgements due to her mental health problems and that the state, therefore, had a duty to protect her, Noelia was granted her wish and exited this world on 26 March, 2026 - wearing her prettiest dress and looking beautiful.

 

In a final TV interview, Noelia said that she didn't want to be a role model of any kind; that her decision was strictly a personal one. Despite this, many condemned her actions and those of the doctors who carried out the procedure [2] which involved the intravenous administration of drugs that induced deep sleep and subsequently caused her heart and lungs to cease functioning. 

 

Despite her mother wanting to be present, Noelia chose to die alone.   

 

 

III. 

What, then, are we to make of this case?

 

Well, without wishing to simply repeat what I say in a previous post discussing the case of Ellen West [3], it does seem to me that the case of Noelia Castillo Ramos has echoes of the latter, in that it also centres upon a young woman's agonising struggle to die at the time and in the manner of her own choosing.

 

Both women may have been prone to obsessive-compulsive behaviour and struggled with other mental health issues, but both strike me as remarkably lucid and single-minded when it came to the question of terminating their own lives.

 

And both cases demonstrate that, sometimes, only voluntary death brings freedom and fulfilment and there are times when non-being takes on a desperately positive meaning. 

 

Of course, not everyone will agree with my interpretation. The writer and atheist defender of the faith, Bendan O'Neill, for example, argues that Noelia's 'state-sanctioned killing' is a wicked act that shames Europe: 

 

"The supposed 'gift' of death for those in pain or anguish is in truth a grotesque betrayal of the virtues of the civilised society. [...] Under the regime of euthanasia we sacrifice our human duties at the altar of 'merciful death'." [4]

 

And just in case he hadn't made his moral opposition clear enough, O'Neill adds:

 

"The idea of the worthless life, a life so awful the state might help to destroy it, is the very essence of dehumanisation. It tells the ill they might be better off dead, and it incites the anguished to pursue that final exit they dream of. It demeans those who want to live and tempts those who want to die. It is inhumanity in the drag of mercy." [5]

 

To which one can only say: Keep your hair on, Brendan!  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Spain legalised physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia for those suffering from terminal illness or living with unbearable permanent conditions, in 2021.  

 

[2] A spokesman for the Church - José Mazuelos Pérez (Bishop of the Canary Islands) - declared that the outcome of the case was another step towards a culture of death (which is a bit rich coming from a man who wears a crucifix around his neck).

 

[3] See 'Sein zum Tode: The Case of Ellen West and the Work of Ludwig Binswanger' (18 May 2025): click here.

 

[4] Brendan O'Neill, 'There's nothing merciful about Noelia Castillo's death', in The Spectator (27 March 2026): click here.

 

[5] Ibid. 

 

 

Can Anyone be a Sex Pistol?

 Anson Boon / Johnny Rotten

 

 

I. 

 

For whatever reason, I'm still thinking about Danny Boyle's new six-part series based on the story of the Sex Pistols. And the question that keeps returning is this: Can Anson Boon convincingly play the part of Johnny Rotten? 

 

Or is it the case that, in order to truly inhabit a role, an actor needs the same lived experience [1] as the person they are portraying? Ultimately, what is the relationship between acting and authenticity?

II. 

 

Firstly, let me say this: I know why some people think it important that, for example, black actors play black characters on stage and film and that such roles aren't given to white actors wearing theatrical makeup. I understand the issues surrounding blackface and how it has lent itself to racial stereotyping and, indeed, racist caricature and can see why such a practice is now considered offensive (even when there is no wilful malice or disrespect intended by the actor playing the part). 

 

Similarly, I sympathise with disabled actors who time and again see roles for which they would seem to be ideally suited go to able-bodied performers. It seems discriminatory - and probably is discriminatory. For although the performing arts take place in an aesthetic space that is uniquely different to what most people think of as the real world, that space is not entirely separate from the latter and still unfolds within a wider cultural history and a network of power and politics, privilege and prejudice. 

 

As Howard Sherman writes:

 

"If we lived in a society, a country, where everyone was indeed equal in opportunity, then the arguments for paying heed to the realities of race, ethnicity, gender and disability might be concerns that could be set aside. But that's far from the case, and if the arts are to be anything more than a palliative, they must think not just of artifice, but also about the authenticity and context of what they offer to audiences." [2] 

 

Unfortunately, whenever someone points this out they are immediately told that the very essence of acting is people pretending to be what they're not; about performance, persona, and pretence; that it's not about the lived reality of an actor, who is paid to wear a mask not bear their soul or expose their true selves. 

 

However, as Sherman goes on to argue, the it's called acting defence is one that often serves to uphold a state of affars in which too many people have been marginalised and unfairly treated for too long; where the lived experience of those who don't determine the rules of the game - including the rules and conventions of the supposedly liberal world of the arts - has been denigrated or dismissed.      

 

 

III. 

 

Having said that - and this brings us back to Danny Boyle's project and the question I asked at the beginning of this post - one of the key lessons of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was that anyone can be a Sex Pistol, regardless of their background.

 

Why? Because it's all about attitude, rather than authenticity; style and swagger, rather than an identity rooted in one's so-called lived experience. As much as Boyle's castration of the Sex Pistols irritates me - click here - the idea that actors can only play people who are the same as them is clearly absurd. 

 

It can be vexing - I wouldn't say offensive - when posh people attempt to portray working class life, or straight actors play gay characters. But, as Julie Burchill says, "if an actor doesn’t look like he’s making fun of someone, we should trust him to give a part his all - and more credit to him if the part is outside of his experience" [3]. 

 

So, good luck to Anson Boon in his attempt to play Rotten! 

 

And good luck also to Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious and Maisie Williams as Jordan. These bright young thespians may never quite understand what was so phenomenal about the Sex Pistols, but that needn't detract from their performance and, as Burchill also points out, there's a danger in getting too uptight about all this: for such anxiety about casting "is merely the equity branch of the cultural-appropriation asshattery" [4]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This moral-ideological notion - increasingly used to negate objective reality - is one I have italicised throughout this post in order to indicate my own scepticism regarding its legitimacy. For those who are interested, it is discussed at length by Brendan O'Neill in a recent essay entitled 'The tyranny of "lived experience"', Spiked, (19 March, 2021): click here.    

 

[2] Howard Sherman, 'The Frightened Arrogance Behind "It’s Called Acting"', (2 August, 2016): click here. Sherman - an arts administrator, advocate and author - was Interim Director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts (New York), from 2013 - 2017. Although I'm sympathetic to his concerns, I worry that his arguments can be extended in a way that ultimately renders acting - and, indeed, even the imaginative creation of characters by writers - almost impossible. In other words, that a call for political correctness ends in a form of woke puritanism.         

 

[3] and [4] Julie Burchill, 'It’s called acting for a reason', Spiked, (21 August, 2018): click here.

 

Why I'm Suspicious of Pride

I.

I'm not a great fan or follower of the journalist Brendan O'Neill, but as an atheistic libertarian he often writes things that cut across aspects of my own thinking (or, as critics would say, reinforce my own fears and prejudices).

Thus, for example, I was interested to read a recent column in The Spectator in which O'Neill expresses his irritation at London Pride; the UK's largest queer celebration which sees rainbow flags hanging from virtually every public building and branded on just about every conceivable product you may wish to purchase in order to show your support for the LGBT+ community and the sinister political project known as diversity.        

Like O'Neill, I'm perfectly happy to commemorate the Stonewall riots and welcome many of the social, political and cultural changes that have unfolded over the last fifty years vis-à-vis the rights of sexual minorities. I might not fetishise notions of freedom and equality, or posit them as ideals over and above all other considerations, but neither do I wish to live in a time or place where these things are denied.  

But, like O'Neill, I also find it depressing to see a genuinely radical event co-opted by governments, corporations and the media and pinkwashed into a bland (and virtually mandatory) spectacle informed by a needy and therapeutic politics of identity:

"It’s no longer enough to leave homosexuals alone to live however they choose and to inflict on them no persecution or discrimination or any ill-will whatsoever on the basis of their sexuality, which is absolutely the right thing for a civilised liberal society to do. No, now you have to validate their identity and cheer their life choices."

Now, we must all assemble - cisgender heterosexuals included - beneath the omnipresent bloody rainbow and condemn anyone who refuses to do so as a political heretic.


II.

Actually, the very word pride is problematic, philosophically speaking, due to the fact that it has both negative and positive connotations. It is, for example, often used as a synonym for the Greek term hubris and refers thus to a destructively excessive or self-indulgent quality. It certainly isn't an unambiguously virtuous concept as Aristotle and the organisers of Pride events seem to believe.

Thus, I'm always rather suspicious of people who speak insistently in terms of pride; particularly those who belong to sexual or racial minorities, as they have a tendency to overcompensate for feelings of low self-esteem and guilt born of a long history of oppression and marginalisation. 

Indeed, it could be argued that pride which has been determined by such a history is simply shame on the recoil, or what Nietzsche would characterise as a revolt in morals and is thus still contained within the same old dialectic rather than part of a genuine revaluation of values ...

Ultimately, the old slogan gay is good is as mistaken as the homophobic view that gay is evil (and for the same reason).

See: Brendan O'Neill, 'Why I'm Sick of Pride', The Spectator (6 July, 2019): click here.