The Cemetery

A famous English poet once wrote ‘let’s go where we’re happy and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates’ – which, at first hearing may sound slightly odd, but is it really so strange?
Just look around you – from here you can take in the castle, the valley, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It really is one of the most peaceful and stunning viewpoints in the entire area.
There are plenty more plantations of cherimoya and other tropical fruits up here, and also poinsettias, oleanders and pines on the cemetery’s main façade.
The pines on the path are the Aleppo pine, the Canary pine and the stone pine. The stone pine is a great Mediterranean pine whose flowering period lasts from March to June. They can reach up to 30 metres and have a very high and dense crown. The reddish trunk remains exposed for the most part, and the main differences between this and the Aleppo pine are that the leaves are slightly more elongated and the cones are more spherical.
This cemetery was built in 1898 and faithfully reflects the urban style of Salobreña, with its white walls and Granada style paving. Before then, a lot of the burials took place in the church square; sometimes even in the crypt and in the side naves in the church itself. But this practice was forbidden in the 18th century due to health and safety.
By 1789, the high loss of lives caused by several epidemics meant that a plan to build a cemetery in the Albayzín neighbourhood was considered. The residents of Salobreña rejected the idea, because the cemetery would be too close to their own houses. However, their objections were ignored and the Albayzín cemetery was built and continued to be the only cemetery in Salobreña for the next 100 years.
The new cemetery is the last resting place of José Martín Recuerda, a Spanish writer who died in 2007. He was a Doctor of Arts, dramatist, winner of the Lope de Vega theatre award and a lecturer in Hispanic literature at several American universities. He lived the last part of his life in Salobreña, where a foundation has been set up in his name to promote the legacy of both his theatrical and literary works.