Three people died and two others were injured, one of them seriously, in a shooting that occurred on the evening of Sunday 16 August in Isla Cristina, a town in the province of Huelva, in Andalusia. Among the victims are a 39-year-old woman, eight months pregnant, a 62-year-old woman and a 16-year-old boy. The ambush took place in the working-class neighborhood of El Rocío.
According to the initial reconstruction of the Guardia Civil, two people arrived on a motorcycle and one of them opened fire with a rifle and then fled. An 18-year-old boy was also seriously injured in the shooting. A fifth person was hit in the leg but his life is not in danger.
The trail of settling accounts
The Guardia Civil, with the support of the local police, has started investigations to identify those responsible and reconstruct the motive for the ambush: among the main hypotheses is that of a settling of accounts linked to a feud between family groups that began almost two years ago. According to information released by the Spanish press, the two women killed are the sister and mother-in-law of a man nicknamed “El Baba”, indicated as the alleged perpetrator of another shooting that occurred on 10 September 2024 in the El Torrejón neighborhood of Huelva.
The sixteen-year-old killed in the Isla Cristina ambush, however, according to the most recent information provided by the Guardia Civil, has no family ties with the two women and may have been involved in the shooting without having any connection with the feud.
The long trail of shootings
The precedent that gave rise to the chain of violence dates back to September 2024, when a shooting in the El Torrejón neighborhood left one dead and two injured. The alleged perpetrator was subsequently arrested in Gijón, Asturias. After that episode some of his family members moved to Isla Cristina. In the following months, other episodes of violence, threats and shots were recorded in the area, which investigators traced back to the same conflict.
In May 2025, the Guardia Civil arrested three people, including a minor, accused of making threats and having fired shots from the terraces of their homes. Just over a month later, on June 11, 2025, another shooting in a home on Isla Cristina resulted in the death of a man and the serious injury of a woman. That episode had also been linked by investigators to the same chain of revenge.
Now investigators are trying to understand whether the massacre of August 16 represents a new chapter in the feud and who actually organized and carried out the ambush.