Spanish cemetery warns of evictions for nonpayment

[Duer 157099]

Source: Associated Press

Pushed for space, a Spanish cemetery has begun placing stickers on thousands of burial sites whose leases are up as a warning to relatives or caretakers to pay up or face possible eviction.

Jose Abadia, deputy urban planning manager for northern Zaragoza city said Monday the city's Torrero municipal graveyard had removed remains from some 420 crypts in recent months and removed them to a common burial ground.

Torrero, like many Spanish cemeteries, no longer allows people to buy grave sites. It instead leases them out for periods of five or 49 years.

Abadia said the cases involved graves whose leases had not been renewed for 15 years or more. He said Torrero currently had some 7,000 burial sites with lapsed leases out of a total of some 114,000.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/11/07/international/i073849S68.DTL

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Eviction: it's not just for the living anymore!

[villager]

1. Wait a minute -- so a relative of yours buried, say 150 years ago, under this scheme...

...passes along a "rent" agreement in perpetuity? Which keeps piling on with the other "final" resting places of additional dear departed!?

[LeftyMom]

2. A lot of cultures move burials after a period.

Families would put the recent dead in crypts, move old bones to smaller locations to make room for fresher bodies, etc. Leaving bodies to take up space forever on land that doesn't do anything else is kind of maladaptive and wasteful, when you think about it. In a lot of places you'd quickly run out of space for the living if you made a habit of it over any significant time period.

[villager]

6. Not saying I agree with our current cultural "burying" practices (I'm more of a "recycler" anyway)

...but, just wondering what the timeline of the "rental" would be in these situations.

Since the dead tend to stay that way for awhile.

[Xithras]

10. More commonly, the graves will be owned by the family.

AND they will often contain more than one person.

Grandpa dies and gets buried in the plot. Dad dies and gets buried on top of him. You die, and get to take up the top floor in this underground party. When your kid kicks the bucket, the grave will be full, so his kids might have one or two generations removed from the burial vault and placed in a mausoleum, a niche, or somewhere else outside of the grave so that THEIR dad will fit inside.

The graves aren't seen as resting places for an individual, but as burial locations for family members...you are simply a temporary resident.

The whole "bury me in one spot for eternity" thing is only prevalent in a few countries. You're talking about 7 billion new graves needed for the current world population alone, if we were to practice that universally.

That said, I AM a bit old fashioned. My wife knows that I want to be buried, and not burned.

[MineralMan]

3. Cremation and scattering, thanks, for me.

I won't mind at all.

[PoliticAverse]

4. If you're dead broke, you're dead broke... n/t

[pintobean]

14. I guess they need to be working stiffs

[SoapBox]

5. ...another freak show event, in this world that is getting goofier and goofier and ...

Well...the world has lost it's mind.

[davidthegnome]

7. Wow

Yeah... you know you're in a messed up world when even dead people are getting evicted.

[bikebloke]

8. Dead beats.

Someone had to say it. :)

[dtexdem]

9. It has nothing on the former practice in Guanajuato:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummies_of_Guanajuato

http://www.mummytombs.com/mummylocator/group/guanajuato.htm

Interesting museum. I've been through it a couple of times. Outside, vendors sell caramel candy "mummies" -- and the color seems just right to match what one has seen inside. ;-)

[Laluchacontinua]

13. The Ray Bradbury quote was interesting:

Famous author Ray Bradbury visited the catacombs of Guanajuato with his friend Grant Beach<2> and wrote the short story "Next In Line" about his experience. In the introduction to The Stories of Ray Bradbury he wrote the following about this story: "The experience so wounded and terrified me, I could hardly wait to flee Mexico. I had nightmares about dying and having to remain in the halls of the dead with those propped and wired bodies. In order to purge my terror, instantly, I wrote 'The Next in Line.' One of the few times that an experience yielded results almost on the spot."


I had a strong reaction when i saw those mummies too -- i started crying. they looked so vulnerable (the naked ones). and i suppose it was some kind of reaction to seeing dead but recognizably human things.

[Matariki]

11. Leases? Leases!!!???

Seriously. Leases?

[Art_from_Ark]

12. Maybe they can move the remains to this fake cemetery

that was used only one time in a movie that was filmed in Spain. And if they're lucky, maybe they can find a cache of "Confederate gold" in one of the fake graves

http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dyn2xSNv0TSk&sa=U&ei=ZOS4Tt2TKoTmmAXi8uyDCA&ved=0CCQQtwIwAQ&usg=AFQjCNG1Rugb2Y7r-J8QX4KoKbssrnxUmg