By Robert Duncan

On the southernmost tip of Tarifa's Santo Cristo de las Animas Catholic cemetery, almost two dozen illegal Muslim immigrants have found their final resting place overlooking the sea with the African mountains forming a backdrop upon the horizon.

Nearby a marble plaque lies on the ground: "In memory of the immigrants who died in the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar." Throughout the cemetery are niches marked with the singular phrase "Moroccan Immigrant."

It is said that a local Catholic priest has in the past arranged for the immigrants to be buried according to Muslim customs.

For others, however, there will be no funeral.

Such as the 11 sub-Saharan immigrants that died from cold and dehydration in 2005 while trying to raft to Spain's Canary Islands. Their bodies were tossed into the water, according to the one woman and 12 men who survived them in rickety craft. Spanish authorities began searching for the raft after finding the bodies of a man and a six-month pregnant woman that had washed up on the Canary Island coasts.

But theirs, sadly, is also the story of many more.