Boy George ws at the club and saw Rebecca's body

Factory worker Rebecca, from Victoria Street, Briton Ferry, near Neath, had gone on holiday in July 2000 with a group of friends.

They were keen to sample Ibiza's famous nightlife and went to a club just outside San Antonio.

But when the girls left the club and began crossing the road, Rebecca looked left instead of right - just as she would have back home in the UK.

Friend Claire Thomas, 23, told the inquest: "We were crossing the road to get to the bus stop on the other side.

"It was completely dark and there were no street lights. Rebecca was a couple of feet in front of us.

"As I reached the centre of the road I looked to the right and I saw a car's headlights coming towards us as speed. I shouted: 'Rebecca, there's a car'.

San Antonio - near where the accident happened

"But she looked the opposite way in the direction she would normally have looked if she was at home."

Paramedics tried for 40 minutes to save her, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver of the white Seat Ibiza that hit Rebecca was breathalysed but tested negative.

The inquest heard that the PM731 road where Rebecca died had been scene of a spate of fatal accidents in recent years.

"Pot-holed" road

Coroner Dr David Osbourne was told the road between the two main resorts of Ibiza town and San Antonio had been dubbed the "highway of death" .

It was a dusty, pot-holed stretch of sun- scorched tarmac until two years ago when it was upgraded to a �1.5m trunk road.

More than 20,000 vehicles are estimated to race up and down it each day at the height of summer.

The road - which has a 75mph speed limit - runs past the Amnesia and Privilege nightclubs which hold 24,000 clubbers between them.

The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death.

"It seems Rebecca's first instinct was to look the other way as she would at home where people drive on the left hand side of the road." he said.

Investigation "unsatisfactory"

"She was struck with some force. She died from multiple injuries within a short time."

Dr Osbourne apologised to Rebecca's family that the investigation had been "unsatisfactory and incomplete" - because the accident had occurred outside the UK.

"I have no jurisdiction in Spanish territory and no power to order the attendance at this court of any witnesses," he explained.

"Because the death occurred outside England and Wales the death is not actually registered here and there is no death certificate.

"Some of the evidence seems to suggest that the driver's documents regarding his insurance and road-worthiness were not produced and it suggests that proceedings were to be taken against him.

"I am very sorry that this inquiry is restricted in this way but these are the difficulties in these inquiries."