A 20-month-old baby girl has been left traumatised and orphaned after she witnessed her father killing her mother and setting her corpse on fire before hanging himself.

Police in the Spanish municipality of Sant Vicenc de Castellet, some 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the city of Barcelona, discovered the grim crime when they saw a fire burning in a bush in the early hours of Thursday, 30th July.

They came across the burnt carcass of Antonella Orihuela, 30, with her husband, Adrian Emilio Z., hanging inside his car, and the couple’s crying daughter, Esmeralda, who had burns on her arm.

The couple hailed from Argentina and had moved to live in the Spanish city of Terrassa, close to the crime scene, in 2019.

It is believed Adrian killed his wife at their home before loading her dead body into their car and driving dangerously with his daughter also inside to try to overturn the vehicle and pass his wife’s demise off as a road death.

However, when he failed to do so, he pulled over in an area of woodland, set fire to his wife’s dead body, and committed suicide by hanging himself with his belt – all in front of his baby daughter.

Local residents then called the police when they saw the smoke.

Antonella and Adrian had been in a relationship since 2011 and married six years later.

Antonella’s family only started to suspect that Adrian had been mistreating Antonella in March this year, when they heard him insulting her on a video call.

Antonella would end up filing a series of complaints against her husband to the local authorities.

However, the authorities failed to remove Adrian from their property, as it was in his name, and they dismissed a violent incident in which Adrian shoved Antonella while she was holding their baby, as she was not left with any visible marks of violence.

It got to the stage where Antonella contacted the police three times in just one week, and only once was she taken to a women’s shelter to spend the night before being obliged to return home early the next morning.

Esmeralda is now under the care of the Spanish authorities and is receiving psychological treatment.

Her maternal relatives are now trying to bring her to Argentina to raise her themselves.