Corpse mix-up involving Malaga man's body is not the first to happen in the south of Spain

This was the latest mistake, when an error was made at the institute of legal medicine (IML) in Cadiz. The body of a resident of Malaga, who had wished to be buried by his family, ended up being cremated as it was mistaken for that of another deceased person, an elderly woman, whose remains were also in the same facilities. This, unfortunately, is not the first serious error of this kind to have been committed in Cadiz province in recent times.

According to our sister newspaper Diario SUR, both the deceased, a man and a woman, died in the province of Cadiz, and the mix-up led to the man, whose wish was to be buried, being cremated instead, while the body of the woman ended up in the morgue in Malaga, which is where the mix-up was discovered.

However, this bizarre situation had already happened in a similar fashion in May last year when it was reported that the hospital of Puerto Real had also mistaken two corpses in the hospital morgue when handing them over to their respective funeral homes and families.

The case in 2023 happened when two foreign nationals hdied on the same date and their mortal remains were placed in the morgue of the Clínico. The German national's funeral parlour went to collect the body and, "by mistake", was given the body of a deceased British man who was cremated at the Mancomunado de Chiclana crematorium some hours later. The huge error was not uncovered until the family of the other deceased person arrived to collect the remains of their loved one and they could not be found.

According to Andalucía's public health service (SAS), an investigation was then launched to see what could have happened. As it was found that both bodies had been "perfectly" identified, it was determined that it must have been caused by human error. In this case, the mistake could have been 'corrected' with a straightforward exchange of ashes between the families as both had opted for cremation for their last goodbyes.

Sadly, this type of error has not only happened in the province of Cadiz. It has also occurred in other parts of Spain. As recently as a month ago the bodies of two victims who had died in an accident caused by a driver travelling the wrong way on a carriageway of the A-6 in Madrid were switched. It was the sister of one of them who insisted on opening the coffin only to discover that it was not her relative but someone else.

The same also happened in 2019 in Galicia in the handover of the bodies of two men. One of them, a Portuguese citizen who had died in an accident at work, was cremated by mistake. In that case, an investigation by the local institute of forensic medicine found the blame lay with the funeral parlour.

Even more gruesome was the mistake made in Manresa (Barcelona) when the family of a deceased person received the body of another person at the morgue, but dressed as if he were their relative. The mortuary said it had three corpses to transfer, two of them being men of the same age and very similar in appearance.