In 2022, there were some 90 unidentified bodies in the Balearics. A significant number of these bodies had been found floating in the sea. Most were in the Mallorca area.
The number has since increased to around 150. They are either in mass graves or in refrigerated chambers. At the Guardia Civil's laboratories, forensics experts seek to identify them and to establish the cause of death.
The majority of the bodies are those of migrants who had drowned at sea. In some instances, there were accidental deaths; a small number were violent deaths as well as suspected suicides. In the case of migrants, it is known that a few have suffered violent deaths.
The Guardia Civil and the National Police are currently working with DNA samples to try to determine the identities in nearly one hundred open investigations. The use of genetic techniques, which began to be implemented in the early 1990s, represented a true revolution in the identification of bodies at the time, a system that has since evolved considerably.
Going back some three decades, there were no migrant deaths to investigate. The profiles used to be people who had fallen overboard by accident, suicides, and murders. These murders were generally committed in distant parts of the Mediterranean and not in Mallorca and the Balearics; the bodies were carried by the currents.
Now, approximately 90% of the bodies are of migrants from north Africa. This change in profile has led the Spanish authorities to seek to strengthen international cooperation, e.g. through information sharing with the Algerian consulate, which is currently insufficient.
An unidentified body can remain for months in the morgue at the Forensic Institute in Palma or be buried in a mass grave in a cemetery, awaiting possible future identification. A judicial source explains: "There's an order to this. The bodies are classified and placed with perfect documentation, in case someday a definitive piece of information comes to light that helps with identification."
Illegal immigration has increased the number of unidentified bodies. That is clear; around fifteen bodies are now found each year. But it is just as clearly the case that not all the bodies are those of migrants. "Bodies of murdered people have always been thrown into the sea. It's nothing new. In the late 1980s, for example, we had the case of a German woman who had been dismembered. Her remains were thrown into the water and eventually surfaced.
"When a body is found, the priority is to determine the cause of death, because if there is a culprit, we have to find that person."