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Antonio González was a man from Malaga, who died of a heart attack at the age of 62, during a family trip to Cadiz in October 2024. While they tried to digest the loss, his daughters started to organise the funeral. One thing they knew for sure: their father did not want to be, under any circumstances, cremated. "He wanted to be buried in the cemetery in Rincón de la Victoria, next to his mother, and he wanted us to bring him flowers," says his youngest daughter Alba.
Antonio's story was reported by various news outlets, including SUR (see edition of 24 October), because his family received an urn with ashes instead of his body, which had been given by mistake to the family of María - a woman from Cadiz who died on the same date. Antonio's body ended up being cremated in the Barbate crematorium.
Now, the institute of legal medicine (IML) in Cadiz has issued a report, openly acknowledging the mistake, which happened during the identification process. Antonio's family has filed a claim for damages due to a malfunctioning of the public administration, in this case the regional ministry of justice.
The mix-up was discovered when the funeral home arrived at the institute of legal medicine to collect Antonio's body for transfer to Malaga for the funeral, only to realise that the body they were about to be given was that of a woman - María's.
When they detected the error, IML officials quickly contacted the Barbate morgue, but by then, according to what they were told by the crematorium, Maria's body - which was actually Antonio's - had already been cremated and the ashes delivered.
The forensic expert in charge of the pathology service of Cadiz then called María's relatives to "inform them of the confusion and try to recover the urn with the ashes". It was already too late. The deceased's daughter had disposed of them.
In view of the turn of events, the IML informed the courts of Cadiz and Barbate.
The forensic experts contacted the Barbate morgue again to recover the rest of the ashes, already aware that they corresponded to Antonio González. The remains were collected in an urn and it was documented that this had been the only cremation carried out that day. The previous one had been carried out four days earlier.
The urn with the ashes was then sent to the IML, where a patrol of the Guardia Civil took charge of it. The officers, in turn, handed it over to the funeral parlour contracted by Antonio's family, who received it hours later.
Alba, Antonio's youngest daughter, received a call from the director of the IML in Cadiz, who explained to her what had happened. "He told me that there had been a double mistake: that my father had been mistakenly delivered to another funeral home and that the relatives had cremated the body."
The young woman was shocked. "All I could say was, 'What are you saying to me?' When they told me he had been cremated, I froze. I had been waiting for two days for my father, to give him a proper wake. He [the director] insisted it was a mistake," Alba told SUR.
According to the IML report, the mistake happened when the pathological anatomy technician handed over Antonio's body - instead of Maria's - to the funeral parlour employees, "without confirming the identity of the body".
The director of forensics in Cadiz acknowledges everything that was not done correctly, despite the existence of a protocol for this: "[...] checking the information on the shroud's label or its zipper seal, as well as the ID bracelet with the identity provided in the court order for the release of the body, and the identification recorded in the register of judicial body releases from the forensic pathology service - including even a simple visual confirmation."
According to the IML director, both the pathological anatomy technician and the undertaker "proceeded to sign the document of departure and delivery of bodies from the pathology service, stating that they had carried out the identity protocol when they had not - delivering the body of a man instead of the body of a woman destined for cremation in the Barbate crematorium".
Antonio's family's lawyer stated that the mistake has caused "moral damage" to the daughters, who were "not able to say goodbye to their father or be with his body, or watch over it properly". "The worst thing is not having been able to fulfil his last wish, and that makes you feel a mixture of indignation and helplessness," said Alba.
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