Friends have paid tribute to a ‘kind’ 35-year-old woman whose body was found in a well on the Costa del Sol.
The victim, named locally as Cristina, had been missing since the end of March after disappearing from her home in Malaga’s Ciudad Jardin district.
Her disappearance had been widely shared on social media and remained listed by Spain’s National Centre for Missing Persons until Wednesday evening, when the alert was withdrawn after her body was discovered in Rincon de la Victoria.
The discovery came after a joint investigation by the Policia Nacional and Guardia Civil, which led officers to a well near the Añoreta area, close to Exit 968 of the A-7 motorway.
Three people have been arrested, including Cristina’s partner, who is understood to have confessed to the killing and revealed the location of the body.
Two other suspects are being investigated over their alleged role in helping conceal the corpse.
The investigation remains under judicial secrecy, although authorities are treating the case as a suspected ‘gender violence’ murder.
One childhood friend described Cristina as ‘a cheerful, very kind girl.’
‘We were friends until we were about 16,’ she told Malaga Hoy. ‘Even though we went our separate ways, I always had a lot of affection for her.’
She said she only learned of Cristina’s death after seeing the update on Facebook.
‘I opened Facebook, saw her missing person’s photo and then read, ‘found dead’. I was in shock.’
Cristina was the mother of a young daughter and regularly shared family photographs and affectionate messages on social media.
According to sources close to the investigation, there had been no previous reports of domestic violence involving Cristina and her partner, and neither was registered in Spain’s VioGen domestic violence monitoring system.
Following the discovery of her body, Malaga’s Government Subdelegate Javier Salas described the case as a suspected gender violence killing.
‘Today we have to mourn the discovery of the body of a 35-year-old woman in Rincon de la Victoria, murdered in an alleged case of gender violence,’ he wrote on X.
‘We cannot allow gender violence to continue destroying lives and causing so much pain.’
Cristina’s body has been taken to Malaga’s Institute of Legal Medicine, where a post-mortem examination is expected to formally confirm her identity and establish the cause of death.
If confirmed as a gender violence murder, it would be the third alleged femicide in Malaga province this year, and the second in less than a month.
Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.
