Foreigners buried in Costa Blanca cemetery ‘disappeared’ to make space as French woman shocked to discover her sister’s tombstone had been removed

CALPE council ordered an inquiry into illegal exhumations at the municipal cemetery after the sister of a French girl buried in a niche in 1973 discovered that her remains had been transferred.

Its niche was taken over by another body in 2015.

The sister was shocked to see that a tombstone with her family’s name on it had been replaced by another.

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There are now serious concerns about other cases of niche tampering that mainly affect non-Spaniards.

It was reported in 2019 that there have been at least 19 cases this century in which niches have been emptied and replaced with other organs.

Those who were originally buried were buried between the 1960s and 1980s and were mainly foreigners – meaning their removal would be unlikely to be noticed.

In July, the head of the HR department of the municipality of Calpe, Antonio Cabrera, and a former Calpe councilor, Bernardo Moll, were sentenced to two and a half years in prison for transporting the remains of a German man so that his grandmother could Cabrera could rest there.

The crime occurred in January 2019.

The German and the French died 51 years ago and their ownership of their niches lasted 99 years.

The mayor of Calpe, Ana Sala, met with the girl’s sister and promised a full investigation.

“In view of what happened before, we are very worried that there will be more cases and that is why we are creating an internal commission to get to the truth,” said the mayor.

It is not known where the girl’s remains ended up.