Businessman’s body washed up in Calpe

CALPE’S Penon Ifach witnessed yet another accident, when body of a man in his 50s was recovered from between rocks in the nearby Fossa cove.

The corpse was spotted on Sunday by a walker during the afternoon, and Guardia Civil officers immediately attended the scene and removed the body, which was transferred to Alicante for post mortem examination.

He was either carrying no identification or it was lost in the fall.

The victim has since been identified as a businessman aged 47 from Albacete who was staying at a local hotel and had decided to go out to do some exercise.

Initial reports point to the death being an accident, with the body showing no signs of violence except for head trauma which sources in the emergency services said is consistent with injuries suffered in a fall.

The man was dressed in casual sports clothes, and the current theory is that he was walking or climbing on the Ifach, and perhaps fell to his death in the sea, with his body then being carried in the currents and washed up in the nearby cove.

Initial examination suggested that the man had been dead for between 24 and 48 hours, and it appears he was unaccompanied when the apparent accident took place as no one has reported a person missing.

Calpe’s Ifach has recently been the subject of several rescue incidents. In September a man had to be lowered to safety with his two children by the emergency services, and in July a 32 year old German woman was left hanging for hours, snagged  by her para-glider canopy to the sheer face  of the Ifach at a height of  some 200 metres, until a heilopter crew managed to extricate her.

By Paul Deed