María Asunción Milá: key obituary facts
Is María Asunción Milá dead? Yes. María Asunción Milá died on October 13, 2026, at age 107.
Cause of death: María Asunción Milá's cause of death has not been publicly confirmed.
What was María Asunción Milá known for?
She was a Catalan anti-death penalty activist.
More about María Asunción Milá
Born: 1919.
Place of birth: Barcelona.
Place of death: Seville.
Gender: female.
Occupation: human rights defender.
María Asunción Milá, a Spanish human rights activist known for opposing the death penalty, died on October 13, 2026, aged 107.
Born María Asunción Sagnier in Barcelona in 1919, she was the daughter of a man who had been granted the title of count. At 20, she married Sevillian painter Manuel Salinas and moved with him to Seville; they had 12 children.
Milá later recalled that finding a place for their wedding was difficult because the Spanish Civil War had recently ended. Her activism against capital punishment began in March 1974, after she heard of the execution of Salvador Puig Antich. She said she acted to “give life and defend life” and because she believed God did not want the death penalty. In 1976, she co-founded the Spanish Association against the Death Penalty and served as its secretary. She was president of Amnesty International Spain in the 1980s and advocated for abolition of the death penalty in the 1978 Spanish Constitution. Milá also pursued a long campaign to persuade popes to remove the death penalty from the Catholic catechism. The campaign culminated in 2018, when Pope Francis made the change. Her work connected civic advocacy in Spain with a sustained effort to change Catholic teaching on capital punishment.