WITNESS - Burial abroad brings double loss

I was a child when my dad died. Johan Cruyff's great Holland side had just lost the soccer World Cup and my father had been in southern France, on his way to Spain to join us on holiday.

Although we lived in England, my Spanish mum found it easier to bury his body in Barcelona, nearer her family. She bought a 50-year licence for his grave and a year ago, I took my three children for their first visit to the grave of their grandfather, Cambrin Kemble, in the Collserola cemetery.

Though tucked away in the hills behind Barcelona it is huge, so I cursed my decision to rely on memory rather than take proper directions - I last visited the place in 1994.

I did not find him.

A few months ago I found out why. I rang my mum on her cellphone on her birthday and met a flood of tears. She was at the cemetery - her third visit since 1974 - and had just learned that my father's remains had been removed, dumped in a common grave, and replaced with someone else's.

A mix of shock, shame, and resignation is still gnawing away at me. But his corpse's fate is a hazard that a growing number of northern European retirees hoping to see out their days in the sun may want to note.

According to the charity Age Concern, more than 1 million UK pensioners claim their state pension outside Britain, but it estimates many more live abroad. The British Consul estimates 500,000 British retirees live in Spain, although how many plan to be buried there is not clear.

Getting an explanation for what happened to my dad's remains has not been easy.

My dad's niche - Spanish tombs are often slotted into walls and are rarely in the ground - was emptied in 1996, the authorities eventually told us. Why, is less clear: there followed a bout of bureaucratic buck-passing.

BYLAWS

Barcelona city council directed my enquiries to Cementiris de Barcelona, partly owned by Madrid-based company MEMORA. MEMORA said it had only taken on the firm after my father's remains had been removed, in 1998.

MEMORA also directed me to a cemeteries bylaw passed in 1985 which allowed for the cancellation of funeral rights in the event of "neglect" such as non-payment of conservation rights after 20 years.

It declined to explain how this superceded a 50-year license granted in 1974 or to say whether the cemetery had tried to contact Cambrin Kemble's family.

A previous 1909 bylaw defined neglect as a 10-year period of non-payment of conservation rights after 50 years had passed.

But a spokesman for MEMORA said even with a 50-year licence, a dead person's family had a responsibility to stay in touch with a cemetery to make sure the address details on file were correct.

My sister still lives at the house in England my dad shared with us before he died. I also have family in Madrid.

The MEMORA spokesman said the 1985 bylaw required the cemetery to place an announcement in a newspaper of the "widest readership" before any rights over a burial plot could be cancelled.

Cementiris de Barcelona said its announcement had been placed in a regional newspaper, El Periodico de Catalunya.

The company refused to apologise because it said to do so would be to acknowledge culpability, even though we expressly dismissed the idea of financial compensation.

So we have given up the chase.

Bones are just bones. My father lives on in me and in my children, I know that. But it was a nasty aftershock more than 30 years after our world was blown apart.

I still wish he had not been buried far away from those he loved. I wish he had not been buried at all.

I wish he had been cremated. I know I will be.