Spain represents the southern, romanic part of Europe. Data collection in Spain was restricted to media reports, but some official statistics are available as a means of external validation. Access was granted to the digital archives of three main national newspapers. In addition, a number of regional and local newspapers answered requests for articles on specific cases.
The comparison with official statistics indicates that the data collection has been nearly complete for the most recent time period. As in Poland, the number of cases increases dramatically from 2000. This seems to reflect a more complete media coverage of homicide-suicide cases since then. In 1997, the highly publicized case of Ana Orantes who broke the taboo of confessing being a victim of domestic violence on television and was killed by her husband shortly afterwards sparked public attention to this problem.