A woman and her partner have been arrested in northern Spain after allegedly hiding the body of her elderly father for years inside their shared home so they could keep claiming his pension. Police found the 88-year-old’s remains in an advanced state of decomposition on his bed in Torrelavega, near the Cantabrian coast, following a tip-off from a neighbour.
Neighbours' concerns and discovery
Locals had grown suspicious after repeatedly asking about the retired mine worker and receiving evasive answers from the couple. A foul smell emanating from the property, along with reports of animal mess and bags of rotting rubbish, had also raised concerns.
Officers from Spain’s National Police entered the house and discovered the corpse in a bedroom that, like the rest of the home, was filled with rubbish and in a state of severe squalor. There is currently no evidence pointing to a violent death. Investigators believe the pensioner’s passing went unreported “for several years”.
Arrests and charges
The unidentified neighbour who raised the alarm is understood to have first contacted social services, who in turn alerted police. Torrelavega councillor Pedro Perez Noriega said: “What we know for now is that the couple has been arrested and that they are also considering whether they suffer from some kind of mental disorder, because the truth is that the home was in a deplorable condition.”
The arrested woman, aged 50, and her 60-year-old partner are expected to face charges of abandoning a person in an at-risk situation, Social Security fraud and misappropriation of the dead man’s assets. It remains unclear how much pension money was allegedly claimed before the body was found.
Confession and investigation
A source close to the inquiry told a local paper that the couple later confessed to concealing the body after the man died of natural causes so they could continue receiving his pension. The source said: “They denied the man was dead even though it was clear we had discovered a corpse. The conditions they lived in were not those of normal people, and the possibility that there may be something more is being considered, which is why they want to rule out other issues with a psychiatric examination.”
The deceased, a former worker at the Reocín Mine in Cantabria — once Europe’s largest zinc deposit — is said to have been on a good pension. The couple were detained after the grim discovery but further details of their court appearances have yet to emerge. An autopsy and ongoing police inquiries are expected to establish a more precise timeline for how long the body had remained undiscovered.
