Solidarity burials among neighbors: "Nobody pays for their own"

BarcelonaMore than 40 years ago, neighborhood associations in the Vallès Occidental region began to self-organize to guarantee dignified burials by adjusting prices. It was the early 1980s, in the midst of the industrial restructuring crisis, and many families could no longer afford the expense of funerals, a custom born of necessity. Joaquín Nogués, current member of the Badia del Vallès Funeral Committee, remembers this. As member number 2, he is the most senior member among the 6,000 members. Adding to the difficulty of paying the installments charged by funeral insurance companies was popular discontent with the "poor practices and poor service" of the local funeral home. The late José Toro, then a member of the neighborhood association, had a lightbulb moment and suggested they bypass the standard system and set up their own funeral services.

Everyone got excited, although Nogués admits he was "skeptical" that the residents would believe in the idea. He was wrong, he acknowledges, because today the committee has 6,000 registered members, a figure that represents half the population of this town, which began 50 years ago as a neighborhood. "Now people are happy because they pay less and we provide them with solutions during very difficult times, such as the death of family members," he explains.

Funeral committees have proliferated in 15 neighborhood associations in the Vallès Occidental region, in municipalities such as Sabadell, Ripollet, Badia, Barberà, and Montcada i Reixac, and are represented in a coordinating body with some 60,000 members. There is also the Bages model, which has led to the Recer cooperative, and the Sinera mutual society, which was formed in 1994 from the merger of the Confederation of Neighborhood Associations of Catalonia (CONFAVC), the Baix Llobregat Regional Federation, and the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Barcelona (FAV). In Barcelona, the residents' association of the La Pau neighborhood also has its own representative.

Although there are differentiating aspects, the common denominator of these initiatives is the operation of mutual support among neighbors through the payment of regular dues, ranging from 5 to 15 euros quarterly per person, although there are price scales according to the members' ages. Children under 10 years old are free in some groups, and then the dues increase with age, until reaching 55 or 60 years old, at which point new individual members are not accepted unless they join with other family members. "Nobody pays for their own funeral," says Puri Castillo, from the committee of the Ca n'Oriac neighborhood association in Sabadell, calculating the dues paid and the minimum cost of around 3,000 euros for a burial.

The success of the formula lies in the constant influx of new members and also – as Nogués points out – in the fact that the organizations have no desire to make money, but rather to be "supportive" of one another. Generally, behind each committee member is a team of volunteers who handle registrations, reviewing outstanding payments, and keeping the accounts up to date. Furthermore, as members of neighborhood associations, they do not pay rent for premises or utilities. Without any specific regulations, the committee system is governed by Law 4/2008 of the Catalan Civil Code, which mandates transparency for non-profit organizations.

Transfer of the bodies

The services offered by these funeral associations are not special or specific to members, and certainly not charitable, all those interviewed emphasize. Rather, they are "dignified and comprehensive" funeral services that include everything from the wake room to the flowers for the wreath, the coffin, and even the transport of the body. Most organizations have clauses in their agreements guaranteeing the beneficiary's right to be transported to their registered municipality if they die elsewhere, covering both burial in a niche and cremation—a service that is clearly on the rise, explains José Luis Conejero, president of the Can Sant Joan de Montcada association and of the Coordinating Committee. Conejero explains that in the case of voluntary withdrawal from membership, paid dues are not refunded, nor are any money returned to the heirs. "The association is not a piggy bank," Puri Castillo points out. Some of the brotherhoods have insurance policies with companies to guarantee burials in case of tragedies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or a potential catastrophe. During the pandemic, the organizations were able to absorb the increased costs of deaths without problems.

Ferran Milán's mother also enrolled him in the Peace brotherhood in 1997, when he was 26, fed up with "paying too much" to the insurance company. He has stayed out of conviction. In this brotherhood, the system works differently, since there is no fixed fee and receipts are only sent to the 4,000 members if there are deaths, excluding the family of the deceased. However, he states that the numbers work out for everyone and that on average each member paid 48.8 euros last year. "To pay for your own funeral, a person would have to sign up at birth and die at 104," he says.