A woman was yesterday celebrating the end of a seven-year battle to be removed from Spain's register of deaths after officials insisted she died in 1992.

María Antonia Calvo, 43, from Malaga, had a double reason to celebrate as a court's decision to declare her alive now paves the way for her to marry her fiancé, Antonio Guzmán.

Previously, bureaucrats had refused to allow the wedding to go ahead as her entry in the Civil Register clearly showed that she had been dead for 14 years.

The Kafkaesque nightmare may have been originally triggered by foul play, possibly connected to an inheritance dispute, she said.

"They have resuscitated me, they have rescued me from the darkness, and I no longer have to sleep in a coffin," she said, thanking officials for resurrecting her.

"Now my little son is not an orphan in the eyes of the law."

Mr Guzman said he had been the subject of mockery with friends telling him he was "marrying a corpse".

I wonder why it took them seven years, and why, if they didn't believe her at first - perhaps she's very pale or something - they came round in the end. I also wonder if the reverse case has ever happened, and officials have insisted that someone is still alive long after they are dead. Presumably if a widow or widower re-married, they could be prosecuted for bigamy.

I'm glad we don't yet have ID cards in Britain. I can just imagine some New Labour jobsworth insisting that you were dead because it says so on the computer. Then again, you could smack him in the mouth and get away with it, as presumably the dead cannot be prosecuted.