The residents of the controversial Sants funeral home demonstrated this morning in front of the facility's gates after observing how company employees loaded coffins and brought them into the funeral home on the same public road that citizens use. Less than 15 days ago, the same residents interrupted the inauguration of the funeral home, which, apparently, is not yet operational because it does not have an activities license.
The neighborhood protests go back almost three and a half years when the company presented the project to install a private funeral home in the old Can CLiment warehouse, in the heart of the Sants neighborhood. The Stop Tanatori Platform, made up of self-convened residents, warns that it is impossible for the daily work of a funeral service company to coexist with the leisure and cultural activities of the neighborhood around it, since the building is located within a public space recovered as a square and garden and next to the space where the Castellers de Sants also meet.
Neighbors even allege in their complaints that the project does not comply with the regulations modified in 2017 by the City Council regarding the opening of new funeral service facilities and with the municipal ordinance that regulates how vehicular access to the funeral home should be. The entry of the coffins takes place on Puigarrí street, a very narrow road that makes it difficult for vehicles to enter to unload the coffins inside the building. For this reason, during the last days, residents of that same street observed how the vehicles parked on the sidewalk to transport the coffins to the interior of the funeral service facility, in full view of all.
“We are not against funeral or funeral services, but rather their location, which has no justification,” insists Carlos Fernández, a member of the Stop Tanatori Platform. In Barcelona there are 87 funeral parlors with an occupancy of 70%, which is why residents warn that this project is "unnecessary" and "breaks with the social dynamics of the neighbourhood". Likewise, from the Stop Tanatori Platform they suspect that the company Próxima Servicios Funerarios, with which it was impossible to contact yesterday, will not start activities until after the Sants neighborhood festivities at the end of August, which demands the blocking of the street where the entrance is located. main to equipment.
Faced with the threat posed to the neighborhood by the installation of the funeral home, the Stop Tanatori Platform requested as a guarantee a document signed by all the political parties represented in the Sants-Montjuic district in which they pledged never to oppose festive, recreational events or cultural events that any individual or entity wants to celebrate in the public space next to the funeral parlors.
“It is possible that the problems that Mr. Collboni has today in his office in Plaça Sant Jaume are others and he does not even know where the street from the funeral home is – argues Fernández – but the district that knows its urban fabric well and the composition of its human and social fabric have given their opinion through an unfavorable report that raises the negative issues of this project”.
The report mentioned by the representative of the Stop Tanatori Platform could not be incorporated as evidence in the lawsuits that the organization filed before the courts to prevent the installation of the Funeral Home in the neighborhood. The main reason why they did not achieve it, according to the residents, is that it was not included in the administrative file that the City Council sent to know the details in the processing of the project.
The judicial process, which began in 2021, is still being processed. “We are waiting for the judge to issue a ruling on the first lawsuit that we have filed before the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia”, adds one of the members of the Stop Tanatori Platform. A ruling favorable to the neighborhood organization would make it possible to cancel the Comprehensive Urban Plan presented by the funeral home and would invalidate the approval of the City Council. If this were the case, the residents could dismiss the other complaint executed by building permit, in which they warned of irregularities.
