Manacor will begin charging an annual fee for each niche in Son Coletes

ManacorThe latest problems and criticisms made public by users who have not been able to bury their loved ones, due to security issues, in family tombs, have led the City Council to now face the urgent need to reform the old part of the Son Coletes municipal cemetery in Manacor. Although the space, redeveloped between 1953 and 1957 after its initial use during the plague, has been in a state of evident degradation for years due to the passage of time and lack of maintenance, it is only in recent weeks that the Council has decided to take action.

These actions have already begun with a visual inspection, commissioned to an external company, which will draw up an initial diagnosis starting June 29, when the upper part of the most urgent tombs will be uncovered, suffering from the effects of humidity accumulated over 70 years. Once this initial phase is completed, during the month of September, the most evident and necessary distinct projects will be put out to tender in parallel.

As for the actual works, they will not be put out to tender until three months later, in December. An administrative process that would end in July of next year, 2027, when the works would begin in distinct pluriannual lots, also depending on municipal allocations, until next year's budgets or through surpluses. A cost estimated at several million euros, considering that the emptying of the interior planters for waterproofing has already cost 700,000 euros and the adaptation of the central burial area of the cemetery has cost an additional 126,000 euros.

Fee inactive for 70 years

Likewise, the Manacor council wants to update the municipal cemetery regulations from top to bottom, which are obsolete even though they were last punctually reformed in 2006, in order to streamline processes, but above all to definitively draw up a census of the more than 12,200 niches (the vast majority on concession to individuals), which means identifying the holders and being able to enforce obligations of action. The intention is that there be at least one representative for each grave with whom the City Council can speak as an intermediary.

This would lead to the possibility, after 70 years, of being able to collect the annual fee for these concessions, which the City Council admits to never having settled. If in other island cemeteries the fee is between 10 and 20 euros, we could be talking about millions of euros that the Council would have failed to collect due to not having an internal and updated control of the Son Coletes census.

The old part of the Son Coletes cemetery consists of 720 excavated graves grouped into 20 parterres, 116 chapels and the central grave, while the extension incorporates various types of chapels.