FOLLOWING on from the sacrilegious attempt on the part of a 65-year-old man to burn down the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, vandals have now defaced a prominent church in Burgos.

The city is home to Spain's second-largest and most spectacular cathedral, which receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year from all over the globe.

One of Burgos' other attractions is its beautiful Baroque San Esteban church, which has a row of sculptures of the disciples on the façade.

Last night, unknown individuals smashed the heads off, which are now nowhere to be seen.

Experts say it would be nearly impossible to restore the statues by reconstructing the heads.

The vandals would have had to have climbed four metres up the front of the church in order to reach the statue heads.