A bureaucratic tangle threatens to leave the Jews of Catalonia without graves. For three years now, a request to build 68 new tombs in the Jewish area of the Collserola cemetery has been blocked by the Cerdanyola del Vallès City Council, in whose municipality the cemetery is located. The situation is urgent: today, after a recent emergency excavation, only eight tombs remain available. According to the current rate of deaths, they will be covered in six months.
Those responsible for the town hall categorically deny the suspicions of anti-Semitism raised by some sectors of the Jewish community and insist that the delay is due to purely administrative reasons due to the protection requirements implied by the location of the cemetery in the Collserola natural park.
In 1976, the Israelite Community of Barcelona (CIB) obtained the concession to establish its own enclosure in the then new North cemetery. In the city there were only two Jewish compounds, in Les Corts and Sant Andreu, which were on the verge of saturation and where, during Franco's regime, there had also been friction due to the movement of remains, something unacceptable for the Jewish religion.
The CIB land has an area of 22,072 square meters and capacity for 3,500 graves, according to the contract. In these 48 years they have dug about 490, estimates León Benmayor, a member of Hevra Kadisha, the group of volunteers that manages Jewish burials and ensures that the precepts of religious law adapt to Spanish legislation. Jewish law requires, among other things, that bodies be buried in the ground; niches are not accepted.
Until now the graves have been dug in the flattest parts of the land, but space has been running out. In 2021, the procedures began to build tombs in steeper and more difficult to access areas, which implies larger works, explains Benmayor.
Cementiris de Barcelona is responsible for the urbanization work, while the CIB pays for the maintenance of the tombs. In April 2021, the municipal public company presented the urbanization and construction project for 68 tombs to the Cerdanyola City Council, with an estimated value of the works of 750,000 euros.
The request was news for Cerdanyola. The Jewish site used to be in the municipality of Montcada i Reixac, but a few years ago, with a change of route on the border between both towns, it moved to Cerdanyola.
From Cementiris of Barcelona they emphasize that Montcada, where most of the Collserola cemetery is still located, takes between four and six months to grant them a construction license. In Cerdanyola, the process has been much longer and more complex. “The problem is that they have asked us to process a specific action project (PAE) because, according to the City Council technicians, the current urban planning approach does not include the possibility of making graves on the CIB grounds,” the company explains. municipal. To process the PAE, a multitude of reports must be requested from different organizations, which inevitably lengthens the process.
Unrest in the Jewish community has been growing over time, to the point that the specter of an anti-Jewish boycott is stirring in some circles. Benmayor is clear that these are baseless speculations: “This is a problem of bureaucracy, not anti-Semitism.”
Given the alarming shortage of tombs, in September 2023 Cerdanyola granted an emergency building permit for seven tombs, which were completed two months ago. Added to one that already exists, eight tombs remain today.
Although they have double compartments, the Hevra Kadisha usually bury one person in each grave, unless the family requests it, explains Benmayor. They carry out an average of between 15 and 20 burials a year. Atid, another Barcelona Jewish entity, has a small esplanade for its own burials on the premises, provided by the CIB.
Eulàlia Mimó, Councilor for Urban Planning of Cerdanyola, claims that they have fulfilled their obligations. "The Jewish cemetery is located in a natural park, which is also part of the Natura 2000 network, and this classification implies a series of environmental conditions, which affect them as well as anyone who wants to carry out an activity in the park."
On Thursday, when asked by this newspaper, Mimó explained that there was still “a problem with the environmental assessment report” and that they were looking at how to resolve it. On Friday, in a new conversation, the councilor assured that there was finally no problem with the aforementioned report and that in fact the Cerdanyola City Council expects to be able to approve the PAE "probably next week."
