What the dead teach us about life

The wife of the famous forensic and pediatrician Narcís Bardalet, Mercé Casals, explains in this eloquent way what has been with him since they have been married, about twenty years are in 1976: «Open the home refrigerator and a boat with biological remains of a cappart waiting to analyze a feature, you can take a god for winnings Honk to buy, you can play a shooting the mummified body of Dalí, these are events of the Interior Channel that can only happen to those who are married to him ».

Bardalet (Girona, 1953) was uninterrupted forensic doctor from 1978 until he retired two years ago, even if he continues to work, heals children and helps with his experience when he is needed. Four decades work with the dead, try to understand what lifeless bodies can tell him to try to unravel why they left, what happened to them, if their death took place for natural causes or that there was someone or something that caused it.

‘The confidant of death’, Apoda Fernando Lacaba, president of the provincial court of Girona, in the prologue of the book ‘What the Dead has taught me to better understand life’, written by Bardalet (with text by Tura Soler and edited by the private Dalmatius Monter Foundation). Because the experienced doctor has had to deal with some of the most popular cases of our country and also of great tragedies abroad: the Balsemen of Dalí and the subsequent excavation, the 20 dead ship accident in the Bañolas lake, participation in the identification of hundreds of victims in the Thailand Tiland of 2004, that 230,000 that 230,000 killed that 230,000 that 230,000 killed, that

The book starts with confessions, such as the fear of the dead he felt like a child, with about 6 years old, he saw his first lifeless person, the grandmother of a friend. The same that both Pan Tumaca prepared was in the coffin, the pale face and an atmosphere that smelled of what was later identified as lilies: «It was a shock, a big negative impact. I started dreaming of the face of the dead. The nightmares prevented me from resting. I asked to go to sleep with my grandfather and every night I looked under the bed to ensure that there was no dead. And, paradoxes of life, that grandfather was Sils’ justice of the peace and caused corpses. So with 14 years, age where he was tormented by that memory, Bardalet decided to face his horrors and asked him to let him accompany the cemetery to see the body of a man who had just been replaced.

A medieval scene

«That seemed like a scene from the medieval era, the body sat on a kind of stone table and started to open. And the coroner explained what each of the organs was. “Do you see? This is the heart, these lungs, this the brain … ‘. At the end the grandfather went to drink coffee and the boy Bardalet asked for a chocolate shake, he even remembers the brand. “There I started to be a doctor.”

Consider the case of the beheaded CIA agent, in the Gerundse Town or Navola, in a house that looked like a fort where a enigmatic character lived that they called ‘the Swiss’. Nobody had seen him for days. The house was guarded by some dogs that did nothing but bark and had to take the kennel. «We come in with caution. The house was fine, but the ground was full of urine and dog shit. We go through a hall and in the end we see the man thrown there. And without a head! The first impression was that we were confronted with the stage of a murder. But a careful inspection made us see that it was not a crime. There were already worms and a very bad scent was observed. The head was not cut. It would have been incoherent. In the rest of the body there were no signs of violence, success or knife or shots. But the soft tissue was designed. There were no blood stains on the ground. Conclusion: the man, older, had died of natural causes and the dogs had broken down his head and had eaten it ». Ojando their documents, they found a CIA agent card in the name of Henry Abt (the dead) and discovered that he had belonged to the Swiss guard of Pope Paul VI, hence the nickname.

One of the biggest challenges he has confronted was to travel to Thailand to help recognize the Western victims between the 230,000 deaths caused by the tsunami who had released the Christmas Eve in 2004. As this happened between us, would our young people die to Clean? The answer is no. That was a titanic work, with thousands mainly naked bodies and without any identification that it had to be carefully recognized to provide information in a database made from the desperate families.

But without a doubt one of the most important moments that he had to live that of the death of Salvador Dalí, whom he had seen at 10 years, when he studied internally in Figueres and was shocked by the passer -dressed “with a panther skin of different colors.” Little could imagine that I would see him expire. It was the one who discovered the cancer who led him to the grave and balm him: «We signed that work. We have inserted a small penicillin bottle, easy to hide, empty from liquid and a paper introduced with the text: ‘Narc’s Bardalet Viñals and Rogelio Lacaci Díaz. January 24, 1989 ‘». And he says that the first people who considered Dalí in their new state were three prostitutes who passed and asked him early in the morning.

Neither did he think that, 28 years later, in 2017, he would have to get up to meet a requirement for paternity. He doubted how the body would be so long. But they found him mummified and with the mustache, as they left it, «Ten and ten mark it. I was perfect. You had to extract hair, nails, long bones and teeth to do the test, and it had to afford your legs on your knees. “We implant them again with such a powerful silicone that is used even in aviation.” Yes, that glue bought his wife in a bazaar at night.