This Wednesday, the Health Department sent several technicians to the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Cardenal Herrera CEU University to inspect its facilities following a complaint filed by a former employee of the center, who claims that over the last 21 years more than 650 bodies have been embalmed “illegally.” This was confirmed both by the university itself and by the department headed by Marciano Gómez.
Public officials responsible for the health investigation visited the body dissection room, where the reported irregularities occurred, and requested documents from the university center. “We are very calm,” a university spokesperson told elDiario.es, who claims to have delivered all the requested documents.
The complaint of the former worker, responsible for embalming bodies donated to the university, led to the opening of an information file by the Ministry of Health, which was already carried out during the first investigations. Based on Wednesday’s visit and the required documentation, health inspectors will have to verify whether it is true that the university broke the law by allowing embalming to be carried out by a laboratory technician and not by a licensed doctor, as provided for in Spanish regulations on the treatment of corpses donated to science.
The man who filed a complaint with the Ministry of Health and the Medical Association over alleged intrusion at work has appealed his dismissal from the center. In the documentation provided to the health inspection, it indicates that between 2004 and 2025 he carried out “embalming work on human corpses donated to science” at the Faculty of Health Sciences of the CEU Cardenal Herrera University of Valencia. “I would like to report that more than 650 bodies have been illegally embalmed since 2004 until today,” says the letter which is currently under investigation.
“The illegality – it abounds – consists in the fact that the person who performed this function was me personally (laboratory technician). The people authorized to perform this function are approved doctors, who after embalming must present an embalming certificate to Health. Decree 39/2005, of February 25, clearly establishes that this illegality is qualified as a very serious offense and that the sanctions include the temporary closure of the establishment, facility or service for a maximum duration of “five years”.
The decree qualifies “the exercise of embalming practices in places or by non-professionally accredited personnel” as a very serious offense.
The plaintiff presented his employment contract, signed in 2004, as non-teaching staff and first full-time laboratory manager. The contract includes “the execution of work or services for preparing bones, embalming corpses and other tasks necessary for the preparation of the equipment necessary for practical courses”.
Seven years after signing the contract, the laboratory technician completed, at the request of the private university’s human resources department, a document to update his job description, in which he detailed that a large part of his day was devoted to the “maintenance” and “embalming” of corpses.
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