17 October 2005 – Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs Jose S. Brillantes today announced that the remains of OFW Ivy Collantes Bautista will finally leave Bilbao, Spain on Tuesday, 18 October 2005, and will arrive in Manila later in the week.

Undersecretary Brillantes said that according to the report of Chargé d’Affaires, a. i. (CDA) Celia Anna M. Feria of the Philippine Embassy in Madrid, Spain, the funeral wake for Ivy took place at the Funeraria Montañesa in Santander on Sunday, 16 October 2005.

CDA Feria explained that the special circumstances of Ivy’s death require more time for Spanish authorities to complete the documents related to the investigation.  Nevertheless, she added that the Embassy prepared in advance the necessary notarial certificates for the eventual return to the Philippines of Ivy’s remains.

After the funeral wake, CDA Feria said that Ivy’s remains are to be sealed on Monday, 17 October 2005, by Honorary Consul General José Luis Gamarra of the Philippine Honorary Consulate General in Bilbao, and then flown to the Philippines on Tuesday, 18 October 2005.

OFW Ivy’s body was found by her employer in a room inside their house in Santander on 27 September 2005.  Santander police reported that the results of the separate examinations  by two forensic experts on Ivy’s remains and the site of the incident have shown that suicide as the cause of death. (Please refer to Press Releases SFA-AGR-715-05, 4 October 2005; SFA-AGR-709-05, 3 October 2005; SFA-AGR-702-05, 1 October 2005; and SFA-AGR-699-05, 29 September 2005 for the background information.) END