A man convicted of killing his ex-partner’s cat in Spain will be deported to Colombia
An animal welfare group that filed a private complaint says it is the first time expulsion has been ordered for violence committed against a pet
Spain’s National Police on Monday arrested a 29-year-old Colombian national who had been sentenced by a court to five years’ expulsion from the country for deliberately killing his ex-partner’s cat in Torrevieja, a resort town on the Mediterranean coast. According to Asociación Leal, an animal-welfare group that filed a private criminal complaint in the case, this is the first time that “animal abuse has had real consequences.” The court ruling, it said, “sets a precedent.”
The defendant preferred expulsion to 20 months of imprisonment, and will be returned to his country of origin, from which he will not be allowed to travel to any country in the European Union for the duration of the sentence.
The attack that led to the pet’s death took place last April in the middle of the street in a residential area near Acequión beach. The convicted man, as seen in a video that went viral on social media, beat the cat with a broom handle, slammed it against a wall and then continued kicking it, even after the animal was already dead at that point. Neighbors alerted the local police, who sent four patrols. After confirming the cat had died, officers tried to calm witnesses, who were highly agitated, and subdued the attacker who, according to Torrevieja authorities, was showing clear signs of drug and alcohol use.
The man was initially charged with animal cruelty and domestic abuse, since attacks on partners’ pets are considered a control strategy that falls within the scope of gender-based violence and known as vicarious violence. Shortly after the arrest, the attacker’s ex-wife filed a complaint alleging mistreatment, although, according to law enforcement sources, there were no previous records of violence between the couple.
The court’s decision, according to National Police sources, sentenced the detainee to 20 months in prison for aggravated animal cruelty. However, that sentence has finally been commuted to five years’ expulsion to his home country. The attorney Mari Carmen Luque, who represented Asociación Leal at the trial, said that this is the first time a Spanish court has issued a ruling of this kind.
Police sources told EL PAÍS that if the man returned to Spain before the period imposed by the judge, and was located and identified, he would have to serve the proportional part of the prison term, or else face a new expulsion with a much stricter prohibition on re-entry to Spain.
There are precedents of this kind of vicarious violence against an ex. In September 2025, a court in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria sentenced an 18-year-old man to 12 months and one day in prison for killing a dog by throwing it off a cliff to cause psychological harm to his partner.
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