Discovery and emergency response

On Tuesday, July 21, at approximately 9:50 am, the Andalusian emergency coordination centre 112 received a call from a witness who reported hearing a very loud scream, seeing a large amount of blood, and observing a man leaving the scene rapidly in a car. The alert prompted the dispatch of health services, the Guardia Civil, and local police to a residential area in Benahavís, a municipality of around 9,500 residents in the province of Málaga. Inside the dwelling, officers found the body of a 45-year-old woman with a deep cut to her neck caused by a bladed weapon. The victim was later identified as a Hungarian national.

Investigation rules out gender violence

By Wednesday, July 22, the Government Delegation against Gender Violence had formally excluded the case from the category of gender violence. Pedro Fernández, the central government’s delegate in Andalusia, told the media in Seville that “at this moment there are no motives or indications pointing to gender violence.” He stressed that “there is no confirmed partner, ex-partner, or sentimental relationship between the suspect, who so far has not been arrested, because he is only a suspect, and the woman who, unfortunately, has died as a result of those injuries.” The victim had at some point been included in the VioGén system, the police database for monitoring victims of domestic abuse and their aggressors, but she was no longer active in that system when the events occurred.

Suspect known to victim, search underway

Investigators are pursuing a specific individual who was acquainted with the victim but was not her partner or ex-partner. Fernández explained that “the investigation is open, there are suspicions, we are precisely in the search for the suspect and there was no prior or present relationship.” He added that “what is clear is that there are suspicions about specific persons and that, regarding that specific person, the search is obviously underway.” The victim’s daughter has provided a statement to the Guardia Civil, which has helped focus the manhunt. As of Wednesday evening, no arrests had been made.

Legal distinction: femicide vs. gender violence

The Benahavís killing is being investigated as a feminicidio (femicide), a term that in Spanish institutional usage covers the murder of a woman for reasons other than intimate partner violence. Gender violence, as defined by the 2004 Integral Law against Gender Violence, is restricted to acts committed by a current or former spouse or partner. Since 2022, the government has published separate statistics for femicides outside the intimate partner context. The distinction was illustrated the same week by a case in Almoradí, Almería, where a man was initially detained on suspicion of killing his partner but was released after an autopsy concluded she died of natural causes and fell down stairs, sustaining injuries that were not the cause of death. That case was removed from gender violence statistics entirely, while the Benahavís case will be recorded as a femicide outside the partner category.

Next steps

The Guardia Civil maintains an open investigation to fully clarify the facts. The immediate priority is locating and arresting the suspect, whose identity is known to authorities. No further details about the motive have been disclosed.