Living is expensive, but dying is too.
To anyone who has been closely affected by the death of a relative and has experienced first-hand the costs of a standard ceremony, with a burial of those of a lifetime, with rental of the funeral home, ceremonies and wreaths, he knows that we are not talking about little money. If we wish to carry out this process in the most economical way possible, what is the minimum amount of money that must be spent when burying a relative?
The three (difficult) options for a free funeral
There they go:
- If the dead had donated his body to science Before die. It is a long and demanding process. There are conditions for the schools to accept the corpse, which must be almost unpolluted: it cannot have suffered a violent death or require an autopsy; organs may not have been removed for transplantation; being extremely obese or thin; or having suffered from an infectious-contagious disease. If you manage to meet all the requirements, the cost of your burial is only the transfer of the body to the university center on duty.
- The law does not allow “disregarding” the cost of the funeral, according to article 1,894 of the Civil Code. They will always be the ones who pay for the process even if the deceased had not left them an inheritance or if the living lack financial means. In order not to pay, the family must prove that it is insolvent, and everyone will have to do it: spouse, children, grandchildren, parents … There is only one exception: the deceased’s siblings, who are not obliged to bear these expenses.
- If the individual had no known living relative and nobody claims the corpse, the funeral will also be free, which will be paid for by the city council.
For everything else, pay. How many?
We have a report from the OCU from October 2020 on this. The simple but complete burial costs, on average, € 3,500. There are huge differences according to the degree of competitiveness of companies in the region. The most expensive cities in which to carry out a burial are Barcelona (€ 6,441) and Tarragona (€ 5,323) while on the other side of the scale are Cuenca (€ 2,261), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (€ 2,397) or Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (€ 2,662). Here’s a standard breakdown of prices for different facets, from the most expensive casket to burial expenses.
Of course, to this we must add, in case you do not want to opt for a mass grave, the price of the niche in the cemetery. The OCU estimates the average price of a niche “between € 900 and € 1,800 for a ten-year rental.”
Incinerating is the cheapest option, with an average price of about € 605, which also saves you the cost of the cemetery. That would be the minimum price to pay, although, again, it will depend largely on your region: in Logroño it is € 198.29 while in Salamanca it exceeds € 1,000. You have to add the price of the coffin, as in the burial, since in Spain it is forbidden to incinerate a corpse if its coffin. Today columbariums, containers for storing ashes, have also become fashionable, and their price is, on average, € 300.
So incineration can cost € 2,000 without problems. In addition, as the OCU points out, where burials are more expensive is precisely where cremations are also, and vice versa.
And the Death insurance? Many citizens have it, approximately half of the Spanish, so that the insurer takes care of the costs at the time of the death of the contractor and with a basic fee of around € 12 per person per year. However, it is not advisable to purchase these services, as it has been proven that, in the long run, the average customer pays four times the cost of their process. It is better, according to experts, to set aside those € 1,000 / 3,500 in life and pass them on to family members.
The Swedish way
Funeral services were dominated by local family businesses in the past, while today investment groups are seeing a good opportunity to take over a market with a lot of business potential. Under this situation, more and more developed countries are considering the so-called “funeral poverty” and looking for solutions.
One of them is found in the Swedish model, which includes this service as one more of its social portfolio. Since 1990 the country charges a “burial tax” under an index that takes into account the individual’s income level, as well as the region in which they live. Thus, when a Swede dies, his family automatically receives a space to store and view the body, a ceremonial hall free of religious symbols, a grave in a public cemetery for 25 years, coverage for the cost of burial or cremation and part of body transport.
The coffin, the tombstone and the costs of officiating the religious ceremony are borne by the family. The average cost for a funeral in Sweden in 2014 was € 3,000 when the average salary is twice that of Spain.
Image: Bernat Armangue / GTRES