A Spanish man has described himself as "shocked" on discovering the mummified corpse of the previous owner sitting on the sofa of his new flat, the BBC reports.

Jordi Giro bought the property in the Costa Brava resort of Rosas sight unseen at auction. However, Maria Luisa Zamora had failed to leave the flat when he arrived to take possession - on the grounds that she'd been dead since 2001. Coroners later said she'd died of natural causes, and the body's preservation was put down to the "salty sea air".

The flat came under the hammer when Zamora failed to keep up the mortgage payments on her holiday home. Neighbours told AFP that "when the garden grew over they assumed she had simply stayed away".

As a rather sad footnote, "questions are being asked" as to why Zamora wasn't missed. Police said "neither her estranged husband nor her children in Madrid registered a missing persons report for the 55-year-old". ®

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