Antonio had made his instructions very clear to his family. The day the time came, he did not want to be cremated, but rather buried in a coffin in the Rincón de la Victoria cemetery (Málaga) alongside his father and other loved ones. But his wish has been cut short by a macabre confusion. At the Forensic Anatomical Institute of Cádiz, dependent on the Department of Justice of the Junta de Andalucía, Antonio’s body was sent to Barbate where another family watched over him for hours and ended up cremating him thinking he was someone else.
Antonio, a native of the province of Málaga, was spending a few days in El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz), according to Damián Vázquez, the lawyer for his two daughters and a lawyer from the Patient Advocate Association, after hearing about this case by a news item published in the newspaper SUR. The man felt unwell and died, apparently due to a heart condition. His body was sent to the Forensic Anatomical Center in the capital of Cadiz to organize its transfer to Malaga and carry out some checks, as explained to them. His two daughters traveled to Malaga to prepare the funeral.
But the next day they received a call from the director of the Institute where, supposedly, their father was. It was a message of apology with a terrible confession: someone had confused Antonio’s body with that of a woman from Barbate, in Cádiz. So his body was taken to the Barbate funeral home and was cremated there. Nobody noticed the mistake.
“A blunder”
As explained by sources from the Board and the lawyer for Antonio’s daughters, the woman’s body did not travel to Malaga, so the Barbate family will be able to keep a vigil (again) and cremate it (again). But Antonio’s wish to be buried in the family niche in the El Rincón de la Victoria cemetery will not be fulfilled.
“It is a blunder for which we ask for responsibilities,” Damián Vázquez has advanced on behalf of Antonio’s daughters. “What they were told was that there had been a confusion and that they would try to get the supposed ashes to them with a columbarium,” he added. “My clients are devastated. They can’t understand how something like this happened. “They think it’s a bad dream, first because they lost their father, then because they lost their body.”
The Junta de Andalucía has announced the opening of a file to clarify what could have gone wrong to confuse two bodies that, in addition, were of different sex. They have also apologized for what happened. “The objective of the file is to clarify the facts and circumstances that occurred in the procedure for delivering the bodies, from when they arrived at the Institute of Legal Medicine until they were delivered by the funeral home to the family, to know what errors could have been made and if “Existing protocols were not followed.”
The complaint has been filed in the Cádiz guard court, as it is the place where the possible negligence occurred.
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