A study by the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) warns of the excessive cost of a large part of the municipal cemetery fees and points to Madrid as the city with the most expensive cemetery service.
OCU denounces the high cost of the cheapest services in the capital since the cheapest burial, which includes a niche for rent for ten years and the rest of the associated expenses, amounts to 2,035 euros, which triples the average cost in Spain. which is 668 euros.
The incineration option is cheaper since it costs 931 euros, but even so, according to the organization, it is among the most expensive in the country.
For the OCU, they are "excessive amounts", if one considers that a burial in Murcia can be contracted for 74 euros and a cremation in Logroño, for 200 euros.
The study reveals that in cities such as Madrid, Valladolid and Ciudad Real the cost of burial exceeds 1,400 euros in its most economical option, while cremation rates exceed one thousand euros in Salamanca and, again, Valladolid.
An amount to which must then be added the cost of funeral services (coffin, funeral home, transfers, etc.), which can reach or even exceed 3,000 euros depending on the company hired.
Given these data, OCU recalls that the cemetery service is a basic service and that therefore economic access should be guaranteed, which does not represent a loss for families in economic difficulties or that pushes them to look for other alternatives such as death insurance.
And paying death insurance for years is not worth it, according to the organization, since it can mean that, at the time of death, the user has allocated around three times the average cost of these services in Spain for his burial. .
That is one of the main conclusions of a report published this Monday and which advises against taking out the product, which is enormously popular in the Spanish market, with a penetration of almost half of the population, some 22 million insured.
Last year, 50,763 people died in the Community of Madrid, 1.82% more than in 2021. In fact, just over 45% were cremated, a practice that is increasing year after year. In 2010 they were only 30% in the capital.
Although the first crematory oven of the municipal funeral home was inaugurated in March 1975, it was from the new century onwards that the boom in this type of funeral services began. Currently, there are 33 crematory ovens in the region, according to data from the Secor Radiography carried out by the National Association of Funeral Services (Panasef).
