Birth, Deaths & Funerals

Birth in Spain

By law, all births in Spain must be reported and registered. Even if you unexpectedly have your baby while you are on holiday in Spain, the birth must be reported here. This is done at the “Registro Civil”, the civil Registry, of the town where the birth takes place.

The attending physician or other official of the hospital certifies the birth, though a registered midwife may also do this if the birth takes place at home with only the midwife in attendance. The report must be made within eight days and should include; the hour, date and place of birth, the child’s first and last names, the full names of the both parents, and the doctor’s certificate. This information will go on file at the civil registry.

The parents can then request for their own records one of two forms of the birth certificate. One is called the “extracto de inscripcion de nacimiento”, which states the date of birth, inscription number and the names of child’s and parents. This abbreviated “extract” is sufficient for most legal purposes.

You can also get a “certificacion literal”, which will list more detailed information, such as the exact place and hour, the attending physician, and so on.

Nationality of Child Born in Spain

A child born to foreign parents in Spain does not automatically acquire Spanish nationality. If both parents are foreigners, the child will be a foreigner even if the parents are residents. However, the child will have the option of applying for Spanish nationality, between the 18th and 19th birthdays. The request is likely to be granted, particularly if the child has resided in Spain for most of that time.

If either of the child’s parents is Spanish, a child born in Spain is automatically entitled to Spanish nationality. A child born in Spain out of wedlock, where the paternity is not disclosed, is also entitled to Spanish nationality, regardless of the nationality of the mother. The laws about nationality vary from country to country and can be quite complicated in their attempts to cover the various possible combinations, such as a citizen-and-foreign wife or citizen-and-foreign husband, or a father born in that country who has since taken another nationality.

Make enquiries at your own consulate. Sometimes a country requires that a child of its own nationals who is born abroad must return to his parent’s country for a certain time period in order to justify his nationality, for example.

For further information you can visit:
http://www.direct.gov.uken/Governmentcitizensandrights/Registeringlifeevents/index.htm

Funerals in Spain

The funeral director is probably the first person you should contact if you are in charge of arrangements for a death. Funeral directors in Spain, just as in other countries, are aware that family members are distraught when a loved one has died. So they aim to provide full service, including all the necessary paperwork and you may need to make only one telephone call to set the process in motion. Funeral directors in areas with many foreign residents usually have at least one English-speaking staff member. When they receive a call, they respond quickly.

If no doctor has officially pronounced the person dead, they will locate a doctor to do so and they will inform both the Spanish Judge who officially issues the death certificate and the consulate of the person’s nationality, as the consulate must issue a death certificate for that country.

You need both these death certificates for any insurance forms and for executing the will of the deceased. The funeral director takes the passport data of the deceased and of the person who is responsible for the body in order to prepare his own reports. He sees that the necessary official certificates are delivered to the family. If necessary, the funeral director can then take the body to the nearest cold-storage vault. Such vaults exist in larger towns in Spain.

Cemeteries are usually owned by the towns where they are located and a foreigner can be buried in most of them, whether or not he is Catholic. Perhaps we should not say” buried” as most cemeteries in Spain are, in fact, above ground. And the bodies are placed in niches. At a burial, the casket is eased into the niche and a pair of masons bricks it in.

You will probably find that you need to be registered as an inhabitant of your municipality in order to be buried in the local cemetery. This is another reason to obtain that “certificado de empadronamiento”. (See expat issues).

If your new home town cemetery does not suit you, there are others available. In Málaga, for example, there is an English cemetery and in Benalmadena there is an international cemetery. These have the sort of burial plots to which northern Europeans are more accustomed. Funeral directors can make arrangements for the cemetery plot or niche. They can also contact a British, Danish, Swedish or German pastor, as appropriate, to perform the burial service.

If the body is to be returned to the deceased’s home country, funeral directors can make the arrangements for the air transport as well as the embalming. Embalming is not a standard practice in Spain, but it can be done.

The Spanish funeral director will see to the body’s transport to the airport in the home country, after which you will have to make other arrangements to have the body picked up. A few funeral directors have corresponding agents in other countries that will see to it that the body is delivered to any town in that country.

Cremation in Spain

If your preference is cremation, you will find crematorium available in many areas of Spain. Cremation was almost unknown a few years ago but is now quite common.

One peculiarity of the cremation procedure is that family members are not allowed to attend the cremation itself. They may hold a religious service before the cremation, with the body present, or after it, with the urn. Cremation costs around 400€ as a minimum but prices are steadily rising.

For those who choose to donate their bodies to medical science, any medical school in Spain will be very pleased to make the arrangements in advance. Simply telephone the medical school and declare your intentions. Their only conditions are that the body be available within 24 hours of death and that the death was not caused by an infectious disease or an accident which requires autopsy.

The usual custom in Spain, where it is hot and bodies are seldom embalmed, is to bury the day after death. This is custom, not law. The law says only that a body may not be interred sooner than 24 hours after the death has occurred. Where there is no cold storage, it must be buried within 72 hours. Where there is a cold storage available, this limit does not apply.