Lucía Jiménez, a journalist from the Canary Islands, a leading figure in the victims of terrorism movement and one of the most persistent and outspoken critics of the Polisario Front in Spain, died of a sudden cardiac arrest in Málaga on Saturday. She was 60 years old.
Jiménez, a native of Agüimes and closely linked to southern Gran Canaria, was the communications director for the San Bartolomé de Tirajana City Council, but her public profile extended far beyond the local institutional sphere. For more than two decades, she was president of the Canary Islands Association of Victims of Terrorism, where she spearheaded a legal and political battle for the recognition of Canary Islanders affected by attacks and armed actions in the context of the Western Sahara conflict.
In diplomatic and business circles in Madrid and Brussels, his name was well known. For the Polisario Front, Jiménez became a legal and media "bete noire" because of his insistence on reopening cases concerning attacks suffered by Canary Island civilians and fishermen in African fishing grounds during the Spanish decolonization process and the years that followed. His work helped shift the debate from the ideological arena to one of victims, reparations, and criminal accountability—a particularly sensitive issue within the European context.
A graduate in Information Sciences and in Philosophy and Letters from the University of La Laguna, Jiménez was also a university professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid. Her doctoral thesis focused precisely on the Western Sahara conflict from the perspective of the Polisario Front's terrorist actions and the need for institutional recognition of the victims, a work cited in academic and legal circles.
In 2010, her career earned her a nomination for the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, and in 2022 she received a silver medal from the Dignity and Justice Association. In a striking image that encapsulates her public profile, she was received by King Felipe VI, bringing the plight of Canary Island victims to the forefront of the national agenda.
Her death has caused consternation within the Spanish civil society movement and, silently but inevitably, reopens the debate on the uncomfortable memory of the Sahrawi conflict, a conflict that remains unresolved in European forums. For the Canary Islands, Lucía Jiménez represented for years the local manifestation of an international conflict whose consequences—human, legal, and political—continue to reverberate across the archipelago.
This publication extends its deepest condolences to her husband, her mother, and her four siblings. Lucía Jiménez leaves a profound mark on her family, friends, and on a cause she championed tirelessly. May she rest in peace.
