POLICE in Malaga will be investigating the death of a US tourist last week as a gender violence crime, despite original reports that the 43-year-old woman had died during a ‘risky sexual practice’ with her husband. 

The Policia Nacional has collected evidence that the woman could have died ‘during or after’ extreme sexual practices. 

The woman was found dead inside a holiday apartment in Malaga city in the early hours of Saturday morning, after the woman’s husband alerted the authorities, saying that his wife was non-responsive. 

An ambulance crew was soon on the scene, but could only confirm her death. A judicial process was set in motion when the medical team was unable to certify her cause of death, Diario Sur reported. 

The death took place in an Airbnb-style flat in Plaza Enrique Garcia Herrera, in the historic centre of Malaga city.

Sources told the newspaper that the couple had spent several days in the tourist accommodation, and that a search of the premises turned up substances that led investigators to believe that they had been engaging in sex games while on drugs. 

If confirmed, this could be another case of the practice commonly known in Spain as ‘chemsex’, and which claimed the life of a young British man in Marbella just a few weeks ago. 

The husband of the deceased was handed over to the courts in Malaga on Monday. Sources told Spanish reporters that he is being held in custody without bail. 

He will be investigated on homicide charges but the judge overseeing the case has passed it onto the gender violence courts, meaning that the final cause of death as established by a trial may be related to domestic violence rather than due to a sex game gone wrong. 

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