POLICE have denied that the skull found in a new age community near Granada belongs to a Dutch expat.
It comes after expats in Beneficio, near Orgiva, told the Olive Press they believed the head found last week was believed to be that of a woman named Linda.
They told the newspaper that the expat mother-of-one had lived with her abusive partner in the alternative settlement for a number of years, before ‘vanishing’.
But last night, Granada police told the Olive Press the skull appeared to be that of a man, in his 40s.
They insisted the red-haired woman, who sold avocados in the car park of the Alpujarras community, was ‘safe and living in another commune elsewhere in Europe’.
“Through our resources we can assure you that she is safe and sound”, the police press office told Olive Press.
The skull was first found on Thursday morning by an expat Romanian woman, who has been living there for 11 years.
The mother-of-two, who asked not to be named, had found it, while taking her dog, Dragon, for an early morning walk.
After taking her children to school, she returned and picked up the skull and put it into a bag, before returning to the car park.
A number of the long term locals believed the teeth of the skull appeared to be those of missing Linda, who allegedly had an abusive partner and a teenage son.
“She had very distinctive teeth and we immediately suspected it was Linda,” said one. “She left in strange circumstances and we were worried about her.”
The Guardia Civil confirmed its Orgiva station had received a call at 11.20am, reporting the discovery of a human skull found by a dog at the entrance of the car park near Cañar.
Her dog, a German shepherd mix, had begun playing with the skull, which had a bad smell.
“Not owning a telephone, I told my daughters’ father to call the police,” the expat told Olive Press.
“Dragon has hooves like a wolf, that’s why it was so easy for him to dig up the skull”, she said. “I decided it was best to pick it up and move it so that neither he, nor other dogs, could damage it.”
Her first thought was that the skull belonged to a victim from the Spanish Civil War, as it is known throughout the area that many people were executed and their bodies disposed of nearby.
But according to the expat, the head was clearly much more recently deceased. “It was definitely fresher and smelled quite a lot,” she told Olive Press.
The police were critical that the expat had not followed the normal procedure of leaving the body part in situ.
“It made our jobs harder,” said the spokesman.
He added that the skull was now being investigated by forensic scientists and that DNA will be extracted from it ‘in under two months’.
READ MORE: