Lack of niches forces the removal of gardens from Torrevieja cemetery

Torrevieja City Council has issued a tender for the construction of 296 additional niches close to the western gate to the municipal cemetery for 269,000 euros (VAT included).

The project advises that this work must be completed promptly due to the high demand for burials in the Municipal Cemetery, which spans approximately 30,000 square metres between the N-332 ring road and the wastewater treatment plant and urgently needs an increase in the number of niches.

The existing availability of niches may be exhausted “in the coming months,” according to the project’s justification document, due to predicted fatalities.

Contest

Last Friday, September 19th, the Popular Party government announced that this contract would be placed out to bidding, along with a price and date. The project requires the creation of 300 niches divided over four pavilions, each occupying around 300 square metres; however, the total space to be developed exceeds 500 square metres.

The project required the external technical architect to remove a 500-square-metre garden area at the cemetery’s southern entrance to make way for three new niche pavilions.

Grounds

The work involves removing cypress trees and a huge ficus tree, as well as relocating a monolith honouring the departed members of the Torrevieja Holy Week brotherhood, which has been on the plot since 2006.

Work on new niches is also required to give enough space for the relocation of remains from the poorly maintained niche blocks in the cemetery’s oldest section, which goes back to the late nineteenth century. For almost 15 years, these old burial blocks have been gradually removed, a painstaking and deliberate procedure that necessitates the transfer of remains, which cannot be done immediately and necessitates a number of safeguards under mortuary legislation.

Extensions

The City Council has completed two niche extensions within the cemetery during the last decade, although these are already insufficient. During the COVID pandemic in 2021, an emergency expansion of 460 new niches was carried out, which was completed in early 2022. This was accomplished mostly by removing the cemetery’s oldest niche area, which had destroyed burials from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was placed in the dividing wall between the cemetery and the wastewater treatment facility. This project, which was carried out without a prior heritage evaluation, demolished a substantial portion of the former civic cemetery.

Another substantial extension was completed in 2011, this time in the cemetery’s eastern section, with 1,242 new niches and 252 columbariums built in five-storey rows.

Growing in the West

There is no more place for burials in the municipal cemetery, except for what the City Council decides to offer on the demolished and yet-to-be-demolished blocks in the oldest section.

Beyond its current boundaries, the cemetery could grow into the eastern area. A developer is working on a customised design to build a funeral home with an incinerator on a 16,000-square-metre property next to the municipal facility’s outer wall. According to the idea, the developer would set aside nearly half of the site for future cemetery expansion.

Torrevieja has roughly 900 deaths each year, while some burials are performed in other locations where the deceased came from, and cremation is becoming more popular, so there is less room in the cemetery.

Author: Derek Appleton