Imagine the sorrow in a cemetery at the moment when the coffin is to be pushed into the niche… to find that it doesn’t fit. That is exactly what happened in the Motril cemetery because the funeral niche had been made too narrow.

As one of the grieving family members pointed out, you don’t expect this kind of thing in a town the size of Motril and much less in this day and age.

So, there was the family trying to jam the coffin into the niche and then realizing that it wasn’t going to work, trying to prize it back out again, which they achieved, but not without scraping the coffin.

It wasn’t a good start, nor a dignified end. They ended up using a nearby empty niche – one of the newer ones – that wasn’t as narrow.

There are two reasons for this problem: firstly, 40 years ago when the older type were built, people were smaller, especially the elderly, and secondly, all those decades ago, cemetery niches were ‘handmade’ as it took the fancy of the builder, which is why some are smaller than others.

Many of these older ones are are becoming vacant, as being a tenant is far from permanent. This, together with the 252 new ones that are being built, should keep the town in supply of final resting places for the next four years… unless Israel attacks Iran, that is, in which case there could be shortages all over the globe.

Anyway, the Councillor for this sort of thing (think of any improbable title) explained that the family had asked for one particular niche and that the cemetery had phoned the undertakers to ask for the dimensions of the coffin – the reply was that it was a ‘standard’ size.

When it arrived with its mortal and impatient contents it was in fact larger than standard, explained the councillor, adding hastily that the coffin wasn’t “scratched to hell” but that the crucifix had had to be unscrewed and removed from the lid.

Motril is different.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)