Ben Pawlowski
THE body of a dad-of-two thought to have died fifteen years ago has been discovered in his Valencia home after DANA Alice wreaked havoc on Spain’s eastern coast.
Firefighters were called to the run-down flat of Antonio, a retired builder last seen by neighbours in his six-storey apartment building in 2010, on Saturday after floodwater from the torrential storm began to leak into the flat below.
Nearby residents in the working-class neighbourhood of La Fuensanta presumed Antonio, born in 1936, had gone to live in a retirement home – but emergency services attending the scene soon discovered his skeletal remains.
Parts of the man’s remains were found in his bedroom, while other bones were located in the living room – thought to have been carried there by pigeons who have since made the abandoned apartment their home.
The body has since been taken to Valencia’s Institute of Forensic Medicine with a post-mortem due to start today.
A homicide group from the Policia Nacional is leading the investigation into the man’s death – although detectives believe the man died from natural causes.
A neighbour who called in firefighters told local newspaper Las Provincias: “First of all I phoned the insurance people but they told me to alert the fire service. The water was coming into my mum’s bedroom as well as through the ceiling of her bathroom and the dining room.
“It had been years since we saw the man living above. As his windows were broken and it had been raining heavily, I thought initially the water was coming in through them and leaking down.
“We managed to see from a look outside that the problem was on a terrace, where it turned out a glass was blocking the guttering. When the firefighters and police accessed the property, they found the body of someone who had been dead for several years, as well as lots of pigeons.
“The place was in a really bad state. The last time we saw the owner was in 2010. The police told me there wasn’t a lot left of his body and it was basically a skeleton.”
READ MORE: Heavy rain to continue through the weekend with orange alert for Valencia region on Saturday
Antonio had reportedly separated from his wife and had no relationship with his two sons.
No action was taken by local authorities because payments for the flat’s rent and utility bills had continued to be paid.
According to local reports, payments were directly debited from Antonio’s current account, which had been kept afloat by ongoing pension payments.
The discovery came after heavy rainfall from DANA Alice drenched the Valencia region – one year on from the catastrophic flooding which killed more than 200 people.
The army has been called in to support local services in Ibiza after parts of the island experienced flooding for the second time in less than a fortnight.
An orange alert remains in place for portions of Spain’s eastern coast and the Balearics this Sunday.
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