Missing Brit, 70, is found dead in the Spanish Pyrenees four days after he disappeared on mountain hike

A missing British hiker has been found dead in the Spanish Pyrenees four days after he disappeared on a mountain hike.

Police and other emergency services had been searching for the 70-year-old Londoner, who has not been named, since disappeared on Monday.

Mountain search and rescue experts from the Civil Guard’s Greim unit, the same type of police specialists that are looking for missing Jay Slater in Tenerife, had been involved.

Today it emerged the victim had been found dead close to the Aspe Peak, a mountain in the western Pyrenees of Huesca on the western side of the Aragon Valley.

The 8,678ft peak towers over the Spanish ski resort of Candanchu and the Somport pass on the border with France.

The grim discovery was made yesterday around 1pm although the information only became public earlier today.

The three Greim officers who found the unnamed hiker’s body informed a police helicopter which was in the area so he could be transferred to a nearby mountain refuge and handed over to funeral parlour workers.

The dead man is understood to have been walking between the Lizara and Candanchu mountain refuges.

The Civil Guard in Huesca are said to have received a message from the UK’s Interpol office in Manchester giving them the co-ordinates of an SOS wristband the hiker was wearing.

Footage released by the Civil Guard showed the operation to rescue the tragic Brit’s body.

French police mountain rescue experts are also understood to have participated in the operation to find the hiker after the alarm was raised.

In November 2020 British hiker Esther Dingled vanished on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.

Her remains were found in July 2021 near the spot where she disappeared.

Esther, 37, went trekking from the village of Benasque, around 175 miles east of the spot where the British pensioner’s body was found.

It was not immediately clear today what had led to the latest tragedy.