Spanish cemetery: Pay up or face eviction

MADRID, Spain - Pushed for space, a Spanish cemetery has begun placing stickers on thousands of burial sites whose leases are up as a warning to relatives or caretakers to pay up or face possible eviction.

Jose Abadia, deputy urban planning manager for northern Zaragoza city, said on Nov. 7 the city's Torrero municipal graveyard had removed remains from some 420 crypts in recent months and removed them to a common burial ground.

Torrero, like many Spanish cemeteries, no longer allows people to buy grave sites. It instead leases them out for periods of five or 49 years.

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Abadia said the cases involved graves whose leases had not been renewed for 15 years or more. He said Torrero currently had about 7,000 burial sites with lapsed leases out of a total of about 114,000.