The cemeteries are now ready for the busiest day of the year, All Saints' Day, which is celebrated this Wednesday, November 1, in which multitudes of people come to leave flowers on the graves of the cemeteries in which they predominate. silence for the rest of the time.
However, this rest is broken in some cemeteries by the noise caused by the influx of traffic in their surroundings, as occurs in the necropolises of Las Rozas and Villanueva de la Cañada, where their proximity to the roads breaks into the calm of the dead people.
One of the most unique cemeteries is the Cementerio del Cristo, popularly known as the Rotunda Cemetery, because it is located in the middle of a roundabout in the Madrid municipality of Villanueva de la Cañada, which visitors access through a zebra crossing. , when traffic permits.
This place was inaugurated in 1933 and in 2002 it had to stop receiving burials due to the urban expansion that the area was experiencing, which caused the walls of this location to end up located in the middle of a roundabout.
“The City Council has respected the wishes of the families who continue to have their loved ones there, giving them the time they need to transfer the remains,” stressed the Villanueva de la Cañada City Council.
Another case in which the large influx of traffic breaks the rest of the deceased is that of the old cemetery of Las Rozas, where its walls delimit a practically isolated plot between the Service Road and the A-6, to which only It can be accessed from the kilometer 18 exit of the highway.
The 1,850 square meters that this cemetery occupies were donated at the beginning of the 20th century by a resident of the town, “with the only condition that it be dedicated to the Municipal Cemetery,” according to the Las Rozas Town Council, since “the day this necropolis disappears, the land will once again be the property of the heirs.”
This location, which has been trapped, both between both roads and in time, is included in the Draft Catalog of Protected Spaces of Las Rozas, as it is one of the few places in the municipality that survive after the Civil War.
In this sense, as stated by the Las Rozas City Council, this place, which houses almost 300 graves, "has been protected as a documented archaeological or paleontological site."
This All Saints' Day, the incessant sound of car and truck engines will be interrupted by the relatives and friends of the few deceased who still remain in these small cemeteries, which access becomes a small adventure.
