Alex Trelinski
CALPE council has ordered an inquiry into illegal exhumations at the municipal cemetery after the relatives of a French girl buried in a niche in 1973 discovered her remains had been moved.
Her niche had been taken over by another body in 2015.
The family- on holiday in the area- was shocked to find her headstone had been replaced.
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There are now serious concerns over other cases of niche tampering affecting mainly non-Spaniards.
It was reported in 2019 that there had been at least 19 instances this century where niches were emptied and replaced by other bodies.
Those who were originally laid to rest had been buried between the 1960s and the 1980s and were mainly foreigners- meaning their removal was unlikely to be noticed.
In July, the head of Calpe council’s HR department, Antonio Cabrera and a former Calpe councillor, Bernardo Moll, both got two and a half years in prison for moving the remains of a German man so that Cabrera’s grandmother could rest there.
The offence took place in January 2019.
The German man and the French girl both died 51 years ago and the ownership of their niches was for 99 years.
Calpe mayor, Ana Sala, met with the girl’s family on Tuesday and promised a full investigation.
“Given what happened before, we are very concerned that there are more cases and that is why we are setting up an internal commission to get to the truth,” said the mayor.
It’s not known where the girl’s remains ended up.
