Spanish Cemetery

Monday, February 11, 2019 

Spanish Cemetery 

            One of the highlights of living in Madrid is about the cemeteries that exist in Spain. In particular, Madrid in general and other city centers of Spain do not have the typical American cemetery with the size of lots all over the place or a vast horizontal stretch of grass. To answer that question, the majority of Spain is filled with apartment complexes all over the nation. I have seen apartments all over Madrid, Andalusia, Castile and Leon, Castile of the Mancha, Galicia, Basque Country and the Canary Islands. From my observations of observing the living situation in Spain, it is common to live in an apartment. Older Spanish families have houses in little villages hours away from the city, but, in general the majority of Spain has the housing situation set up apartment style and sometimes even like a town home. The common American way of having a house with a full 360 degree turn all over the yard is rare and not common.

            This brings me to the curiosity of how they take care of the dead. Since Spain is crowded and bundled up with apartments all over their major cities, how are the dead treated after death. Just like the rest of my observations, I went to visit a cemetery in the village of Azuqueca de Henares. Azuqueca de Henares is an area that belongs in Castile of the Mancha and in other words the little village that didn’t make it in the boundaries of belonging to the community of Madrid. I would describe the area like living near John Wayne airport or South Coast plaza in Southern California because those areas are near border cities and don’t really represent the zone they belong too. They are either fighting to be in Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, Irvine, Newport or Tustin. Well, Azuqueca is sometimes referred to by the locals as the “outskirts of Madrid” even though it no longer is in the community of Madrid. 

            So, when I went to the local cemetery in the area, it was located somewhere north of the city and isolated from the center of town. As I arrived there, I noticed how that environment was mainly concrete and just the look of a storage warehouse. As I entered in there, I didn’t get that feel like I did with the Southern Californian cemeteries. The Southern Californian cemeteries were big, green and there was hardly any concrete. The only artificial that existed was the head stones of the grave and the pavement of the roads. The local cemetery in Azuqueca is a representation of what a Spanish cemetery is like. When I entered, I noticed that the graves were in marble blocks and above ground level. So, no one was buried underground. It looks like the coffins were placed on top of the ground in permanent marble cases. Each grave looked personalized and decorated with Christian symbols such as a cross or a crucified Christ. 

            In terms of what I saw, I will have to say that there is a strong correlation with the apartment lifestyle in Spain correlating with how the graves in Spain are not big and small. I did hear from a citizen from Spain that a lot of people donate their body and organs to science, or they get cremated. Besides that, I think I made an interesting cultural find in Spain once again.