Daughter of Malaga man mistakenly cremated: 'My father wanted to be buried next to my grandmother'

A woman from Malaga has been left deeply upset after her dead father was mistakenly cremated by another family.

Antonio González García died last of a heart attack during a family trip to Cadiz. His last wish, as he had always expressed to his daughters, was to be buried next to his mother in Rincón de la Victoria cemetery on the eastern Costa del Sol. However, in addition to the pain of suddenly losing their 62-year-old father, they have now been left deeply unhappy after he was cremated by mistake when his corpse was confused with that of a woman.

Malaga motorbike rider Julio García competed at the World Superbike Championship in Jerez de la Frontera with many of his family members coming to support him from the grandstand. Among them was his uncle Antonio González and his youngest daughter, Alba. "We stayed in different hotels in the area except for my father, who stayed with a cousin who lives in El Puerto de Santa Maria," said Alba, who lives in Malaga.

On the evening of Friday 18 October, they all got together for dinner and a drink at his cousin's house. The last photo they took together is the one shown in this article, where the family can be seen gathered around some pizzas, and Antonio can be seen happy, in the centre. "I went to the hotel and I left my father there. He was fine," Alba said. At 2.40am, she received a phone call from her cousin telling her to come back to the house urgently.

Despite signs of Antonio dying from a heart attack, an emergency doctor who attended the home could not certify that was the cause of death, even though Antonio was a cardiac patient and had two coronary stents inserted two years ago, so the case was brought to court with a forensic doctor to carry out an autopsy. "We would have avoided all this if they had certified him there, the autopsy would not have been necessary," Alba said.

Alba then started making preparations with a funeral home, with two employees attending her home to meet her and talk about the service. She told them the most important part was to fulfil her father's wish to be buried, not cremated. "He wanted to be with his mother in Rincón and for us to bring him flowers, that was all he said," Alba said.

"On Sunday, around 1.30pm, they called me from the Cadiz court and asked me if I had a funeral parlour, that my father was there and that nobody had picked him up," Alba added.

She did not hear from them again until Monday when she said the director of the IML institute of legal medicine in Cadiz phoned her. "He asked me if I was the daughter and told me that there had been a mistake, that my father had been delivered to another funeral home by mistake and that the relatives had cremated the body," Alba said.

"All I could say was, 'what are you talking about?', when he told me that he had been cremated, I froze. He insisted that it was a mistake, that he was very sorry and that he would apologise. Then I asked him where my father was and they told me that the Guardia Civil had gone to get his remains. I couldn't believe what they were telling me," Alba said.

The other family, that of a woman from Cadiz who died on the same date, had been given a funeral urn which contained the remains of Antonio González and, according to sources, they even held the funeral believing they were those of the dead woman. The mistake was discovered when the funeral parlour in Malaga went to the IML in Cadiz to collect the body of the Malaga native.

On Tuesday, the fourth day after his death, "they told us that my father would be arriving that day at the Malaga Cemetery Park (Parcemasa), that they were preparing a room for him. A lot of people called to find out where the funeral parlour was because they wanted to go and say goodbye to him," Alba added. Antonio González had run a hardware store next to La Goleta bridge in Malaga city and had closed the business just a few months ago as he planned to retire.

"A cousin of mine went to talk to the priest and told him that there was no space, that we could celebrate mass the next day (Wednesday, five days after the death). My cousin begged him and he made a space for us to have a funeral service at 6pm. Although he didn't go to mass, he was a Catholic, he always carried his holy cards in his wallet," Alba said. After the funeral service, Antonio's remains were taken to Rincón de la Victoria, where he wanted to be buried, with the funeral urn left in a columbarium.

"The worst thing is not having been able to fulfil his last wish, it is a mixture of indignation and impotence, but you can only resign yourself to the fact that at least he is buried," Alba said. She pointed out her sister Jennifer, who is four months pregnant, is also having a "very hard time". "I was able to say goodbye to my father, but she couldn't because she couldn't travel to Cádiz. My sister wanted us to open the coffin so that she could say goodbye to him and it wasn't possible," Alba said.

The family has put the case in the hands of lawyer Francisco Damián Vázquez, who is looking into the possibility of legal action. "What we want to know is at what point did someone confuse two people of different sexes. How can you cremate a man instead of a woman?" Alba said.

The rider Julio García who competed in the superbike race without knowing his uncle, who had gone to see him race had died, finished runner-up in the Jerez round of the world championship. When he was told what had happened, he dedicated the podium to Antonio González and his daughters.