In the northwestern Spanish region of Castile and León, a typical day for Fatima* started at 2am and stretched late into the night as she planted vegetables, herded sheep, and cleaned chicken coops. Gradually, her to-do list lengthened until she was working up to 19 hours a day, seven days a week.

“If I were still there, I would have probably killed myself,” says the 50-year-old Moroccan national. “When I start thinking about it, I get anxious. Why did I put up with all of that?”

Fatima left Morocco for her third seasonal work stint in Spain at her husband’s urging, eager for funds to send home. In 2020, she was among thousands of women coming to pick strawberries, bracing for hard labour and family separation. Then the pandemic dashed those plans when her work visa was cancelled. Rather than return empty-handed to her husband and four children (then aged seven to 26), she stayed on in Spain, working unofficial jobs: caring for children and elderly people, baking bread, sewing shoes. “Some paid me and others no,” she says.

She was vulnerable: few in Spain spoke Berber, her native language, and she spoke little Spanish or Arabic. Pulled out of school at age six to work on the family farm, she was illiterate. A brother in another province initially helped, but after his wife fretted about harbouring an undocumented person, he heard of a farm in Castile and León looking for a worker. “And that’s when the nightmare began,” says Fatima.

At first, the family who owned the farm treated her and another Moroccan woman well, even helping in the fields. The other woman translated and assisted with reading. But there were hints: no contract, and Fatima was startled to learn the other woman was sleeping with one of the family’s sons. She received three payments of €300 (£255) for the first three months - far short of Spain’s minimum wage of about €1,425 a month. Then payments stopped, with the family citing the high cost of securing her residency.

About 18 months in, the other woman got her papers and left. “That’s when everything changed,” Fatima says. She was left to haul animal feed, milk sheep, plant and harvest alone. The son who had been sleeping with the other woman began pressuring her for sex, becoming angry when she refused. He and his father became physically abusive, hitting her and warning of worse violence. “One time the son ran over my foot with the tractor. I asked him, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ He said, ‘You deserve this’ and that ‘I run this tractor over you and crush you.’”

She was housed in a shack without heating, freezing as night-time temperatures dropped to - 6C (21F). A small heater given by a Moroccan man who occasionally bought milk was taken by the family. Conditions worsened after she asked about unpaid wages and residency papers: the father and son smashed the shack’s windows and doors. “After that it felt like I was sleeping on a mountain of ice,” she says.

She lived without drinking water, using a hose for livestock as a makeshift shower and a hole in the ground as a toilet. “I didn’t think of asking for help. Instead I thought, ‘If I can just hold on a bit longer, maybe I can get residency,’” she says. She was allowed off the farm once a fortnight, taken to a small supermarket, and warned to stay away from police - any interaction would mean deportation to Morocco. “All I could think of was my family and the fact that I did not want to go home empty-handed,” she says.

Food was scarce; her closest kitchen was a wood-burning stove. She kept a hidden mobile phone to contact her family periodically. “At times I would bang my head against the wall,” she says. “My thought was that I would either leave here with papers, or dead.”

In late 2023, police were tipped off about a woman being housed and exploited at a sheep farm. About two months later, anti-trafficking agents from Burgos and Valladolid, along with labour inspectors, had gathered enough evidence to intervene. Police found Fatima in appalling conditions, living without electricity in unsanitary housing. For Fatima, the sight of police sparked overwhelming joy. “I thought, ‘Let whatever needs to happen, happen, but I want to put an end to this,’” she says, estimating she was mistreated for up to two years after the other woman left.

Since being rescued, Fatima has rebuilt her life with help from the Adoratrices, a Catholic religious order aiding human trafficking victims. They paid for her hostel stay after the raid, helped her find work, secure housing, and see her children again. Consuelo, the head of Adoratrices in Burgos (who asked her last name not be published), says: “When we met her, she was downcast, quiet and had this sad look on her face. … Now she’s completely different. She enters a room and lights it up.” Fatima calls the support life-changing: “Meeting them was the best thing that ever happened to me. The rest was a nightmare.”

Police have arrested three men suspected of human trafficking for labour exploitation; a trial is expected in the coming months. Fatima now has the legal right to work in Spain. “After everything I’ve been through, I have a lot of faith in the authorities. I hope justice is served,” she says. “I’m super-proud to have endured that. Now I’m happy and eager to start a new life and bring my family here to be with me.”

* Name changed to protect her identity.