FUNERALS IN SPAIN

THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR

This person is probably the first one you will want to contact if you are in charge of arrangements for a death.

Funeral directors in Spain, just as in other countries, are aware that family members are distraught when a loved one has died. So they aim to provide full service, including all the necessary paperwork, and you may need to make only one telephone call to set the process in motion.

Funeral directors in areas with many foreign residents usually have at least one English-speaking staff member. When they receive a call, they respond quickly.

If no doctor has officially pronounced the person dead, they will locate a doctor to do so and they will inform both the Spanish judge who officially issues the death certificate and the consulate of the person’s nationality, as the consulate must issue a death certificate for that country.

You need both these death certificates for any insurance forms and for executing the will of the deceased. The funeral director takes the passport data of the deceased and of the person who is responsible for the body in order to prepare his own reports. He sees that the necessary official certificates are delivered to the family.

If necessary, the funeral director can then take the body to the nearest cold-storage vault. Such vaults exist in most larger towns in Spain.

Cemeteries are usually owned by the towns where they are located and a foreigner can be buried in most of them, whether or not he is Catholic.

Perhaps we should not say « buried » as most cemeteries in Spain are, in fact, above ground. And the bodies are placed in niches. At a burial, the casket is eased into the niche and a pair of masons brick it in.

You will probably find that you need to be registered as an inhabitant of your municipality in order to be buried in the local cemetery. This is another reason to obtain that « certificado de empadronamiento » (please see our section registration in the Town Hall) or municipal registration.

If your new home-town cemetery does not suit you, there are others available. In Málaga, for example, there is an English cemetery and in Benalmadena there is an International Cemetery. These have the sort of burial plots to which northern Europeans are more accustomed.

Funeral directors can make arrangements for the cemetery plot or niche. They can also contact a British, Danish, Swedish or German pastor, as appropriate, to perform the burial service.

If the body is to be returned to the deceased’s home country, funeral directors can make the arrangements for the air transport as well as the embalming. Embalming, is not a standard practice in Spain, but it can be done.

The Spanish funeral director will see to the body’s transport to the airport in the home country, after which you will have to make other arrangements to have the body picked up. A few funeral directors have corresponding agents in other countries who will see to it that the body is delivered to any town in that country.